Billow, oil on canvas, 24"x24", 2010


...."Jarringly more brazen are Shapiro’s canvases which showcase formal disconnects in weight and movement.  The paint is thicker than Wren’s and applied with bolder slash-like strokes across each canvas.  As expressionistic and impulsive as it sounds, Shapiro is able to reign in each passage of careening orange or green by canceling them out with others as the effect begins to read like bold tally marks keeping score of an exhilarating paint battle.  In the piece “Billow”, acid and lime green paint slopes like a waterfall across the canvas beneath a layer of red-orange bands that contradict the activity.  Although too irregular to be called “stripes”, the bands form a grid-like patchwork that flourish on their own with a satisfying chromatic richness.  Shapiro’s paintings carry themselves in kinship with Howard Hodgkin’s work as both artists’ canvases have survived drastic alterations during their production.  Shapiro doesn’t leave us in turmoil though – we get the results of each careful adjustment and in the end, feel at peace with the idiosyncratic strife below the surface. Luckily, it doesn’t ever feel too much like work or too much like play....