Sharon Shapiro

Lives and works in Charlottesville, VA, USA

Artist statement

My work traces the distance between society’s expectations and a vivid, often turbulent inner life. Centered on young women, the paintings explore desire beneath composure and the friction between imagination and reality, utopia and dystopia, lightness and discomfort. They return to moments of transformation, when posture, gesture, and expression register the rawness of change. I collaborate with women, staging photographs that I combine with environments drawn from my photographs and other sources. These composites become my paintings. Rooted in the cultural landscape of the American South, my work treats nostalgia as both longing and critique. I position women within worlds shaped by spectacle, ritual, and belonging, including museum dioramas and high school football fields. Dioramas offer wilderness made orderly: animals and landscapes arranged and illuminated for observation. Football fields are similarly constructed arenas, organized around ritual, competition, and performance. Wild animals recur as counterparts to the figures. Women and animals share histories of romanticization, display, and vulnerability without remaining passive in these worlds. By placing women within these spaces, I ask who is being watched, who belongs, and who controls the terms of looking. Color functions as both structure and emotional code. Saturated palettes and horizontal bands draw from flags, weather maps, chakra diagrams, and other systems designed to organize information. I use these...

Artwork