"The Patience and Ambition of Andrea Shapiro"

While Shapiro might exhibit satisfaction with her work within a given painting, one gets the sense, from her constant experimentation that she is, on the whole, dissatisfied. She may incorporate lessons from the past into a new painting, but she despises being iterative and falling into patterns. She yearns to create something of inexplicable beauty and abandons calculation in order to do so. As she paints, she may have moments where she believes she has attained her goal, but doubt always sets in, as it inevitably does when one is after the eternal and the mysterious. Shapiro finds that only such unreachable things are worthy of her pursuit.

One of the major problems Shapiro tries to solve is dealing with diametric qualities that she finds valid. She appreciates the serene and the tumultuous, for example, but remains undecided on how to reconcile the two. To include both in a single painting may force a negation, while choosing one means abandoning the other. Shaprio recognizes that the merits and detriments of each scenario must be explored in multiple paintings. Patiently, she will set aside brazen ambition knowing that other opportunities will come.

-Eugene Hwang