Biography

I am fascinated by the conflict between inner and outer experience; the need to stay composed while one's interior is churning. Painting is a good vessel for this tension. I capture the tender, beguiling sensuality that emerges at an early age, and the electric interplay of power and sexuality that surfaces in the framework of the everyday. Drawn from a range of photographic sources, however, my subjects are composites, sharing traits that are both male and female, child and adult, animal and human.

Elaborating on what I see and sense, I attempt to depict the inherent power of external beauty, proving it to reveal little of the true self. We constantly refashion our sense of self from fragments of personal experience, from what the world perceives, from the mythology we have created of our pasts in trying to piece them together, and from what withers or flourishes inside. I hope to provoke the viewer to question everything, and only believe half of what can be seen.

Website

www.sharonshapiro.com

Curriculum

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