Elinor Shapiro

Walking Contamination

Pastel, charcoal, oil and acrylic on canvas

“So many different things have touched me in my life: mental turmoil and illnesses, disabilities both physical and mental, but also so much beauty. People from different places and times coming together to create as one. All of it, all of my experiences come out on the canvas. This is why my craving for adventure will never fade; with every new adventure comes new art. It is also why I will never regret a negative experience. We can only grow or break from adversity, and I will not let it break me. Other artists cringe when I drag my canvases violently around my studio, walking on them and scribbling, but there are no mistakes in art. Only evolution.”

— Elinor Shapiro

About the artist

Elinor Shapiro

Elinor Shapiro is a multimedia artist whose spontaneous process results unpredictable and raw artworks. A native of Los Angeles, she studied fine art at California State University Northridge, where she was a very successful student, maintaining a 4.0 GPA despite her learning disabilities. Through she thrived academically she was bored and craved adventure. In 2019 she relocated to France, where she became Associate Director at the artist residency Chateau Orquevaux. There she developed her artistic voice, delving into Charcoal, Acrylics, Oil paints, and pastel, creating large scale mixed media artworks. In the midst of the pandemic she temporarily moved to New York City where she is self-isolating and pursuing new forms of expression, combining words, figures, and emotions to represent the many facets of her artistic voice.

Growing up Elinor struggled a lot in school. She has a number of learning disabilities that simply described, affect her memory, writing ability, and math. These issues caused a lot of emotional turmoil as well. Anger and frustration were imbued into all of her education. She attended a specialized high-school that focused on unique education plans and encouraged her interest in art. Her disabilities, while unnamed are a lot like dyslexia. Even so, writing and words have been a love of hers for her whole life, but people tended to focus on her mistakes instead of the content. Her self-esteem and anxiety became a real problem when she expressed herself through written word. To combat that she incorporated words and phrases into her art and when mistakes are made, she highlights them, they become a part of the piece. They are no longer mistakes but a statement. Three years into college, and seven unpassed math classes later she left university fed up with the lack of support and moved to France to pursue art. Her learning disabilities still affect her daily life, but she embraces them.

Elinor spent over a year working at Chateau Orquevaux Artist residency in France. It was her job to work daily with international artists, make sure they had everything they needed in the studio. This is where she blossomed, and the experiences she had they transformed her art. The wild interactions and freedom did more to unlock her artistic voice than the smothering atmosphere of university ever did. Artists from all over the world, working in tandem, equal, where no one was the professor and no one was the student. When Covid hit, she moved to New York City and she made the leap to working on her art full time it was then that she had her first solo Art show, Fragments at Vanrensburg Gallery in Melbourne Australia.
She doesn’t know for sure what the future will hold, but she has been accepted to an artist residency in Berlin Germany, and Iasi Romania. From there she plans to travel through East Asia making art as she goes.