We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Debra Shapiro. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Debra below.

Debra , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I started doing work on the theme of parties and celebrations after attending a series of beautiful weddings in France and the US after the lockdown for travel was lifted. My gratitude and emotional reaction to these happy events inspired me to embark upon a project of vibrantly colored paintings and collages expressing the joy of gathering with loved ones in beautiful outdoor locations. I am planning new work about intimate moments between two or three people on the periphery of parties or ceremonies that are set near beaches and pools. I’ve also completed commissions that met my guidelines and used photos from a celebration as the starting point.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a figurative and landscape painter living and working in San Francisco. My work is about celebration, parties, festive events, and close relationships of the people within the gathering. The beautiful locations where these events take place become as important as the figures, with the atmospheric light of blue skies, sunny days, and idyllic leisure time with friends and loved ones. These paintings are based on my own experiences and mostly from my own photos. My palette uses colors that are seen in the Mediterranean and California. I avoid earthy tones on my palette, instead choosing magenta, crimson, orange, yellow, ultramarine. My preference is to make strokes of color that I leave instead of blending, to keep the colors clean and vibrant. I have started making collages from cutting segments of vellum painted oil and creating a simplified version of my image that I make a larger painting from. This has helped me get over my urge to overwork and overthink the work. It has allowed me to relax and enjoy the process of both the collage and the painting! Relying upon memory and imagination I try not to duplicate the photo. My works captured the joy of gatherings in beautiful settings and the  commissions I accept are based upon photos from a celebration or happy occasion.

I moved to San Francisco in the mid 1980’s to take a needed respite to heal my broken heart and to reset my life. I had been working as an elementary school teacher and a flight attendant and decided to take the leap to live the life I had imagined when my father suffered a fatal stroke and With the help of my mother and against her advice I began taking art courses in San Francisco and working on murals and trompe l’oeil and doing faux finishes which was trending at the time. Then moving to Florence for a traditional painting course, I fell in love with the process of painting in oil. I mainly painted landscapes as I was still learning to paint figures but my frequent visits to the Ufizzi Gallery and Pitti Palace where I saw Boticelli’s Primavera, Rembrandt self-portrait that still gives me chills to think about.  The Caravaggio exhibit was amazing and on visits to Venice and Rome I was able to see Titian, Tintoretto, and Tiepolo. I had friends in Paris I visited and saw the paintings in the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay that pop into my mind to help me when I am painting.
When I returned to San Francisco I attended the SFArt Institute to study painting and eventually found a local atelier and portrait teacher whose weekly classes helped me make the transition into a more confident figurative painter.
A mother of two boys who are now grown and out of the house, I painted about their stages of life in my earlier work. My series “Adolescence, a Changing Landscape” was about the emotional turmoil of the teenage years. I was fascinated by the beauty of the youthful figures, and their capacity for fun and joy as well as their angst and drama that was a common element. When my sons left for college, both in LA , I was working on commissions and teaching a group every week. I was loving helping others learn what I knew, but I was feeling somewhat blocked in what I was painting for my own purpose and gratification. I gave up my studio in the SOMA district of San Francisco in 2020 and started working from home in a former guest bedroom. It has amazing light and faces northwest which is the important direction according to feng-shui which I am only beginning to understand,but I believe it is real. I used the money I had paid rent with to hire coaches on marketing topics such as website, social media, branding, and pricing. This was all new to me and admittedly daunting, but I have persisted and am beginning to see results in terms of my following on instagram, inclusion in magazines and on-line exhibits, and more sales,I have sold all the pieces from my first series of “ Parties and Celebrations”.

The new body of work I am currently working on, continues the themes of celebration and festive moments but this time, the focal point captures the smaller, quieter and more intimate moments of the occasion. The connection is between friends, relatives, or lovers, maybe after the event has ended, but they have lingered. I love working from my imagination and making up stories for each of the artworks. I hope to have new pool and beach paintings in the LA Art Show and am completing two commissions. 

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my favorite books to return to when I need a reset of my mindset. I also love: The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts and The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. Deep Work by Cal Newport, Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo, and Playing Big by Tara Mohr.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I read and listen to several books a week while I go for walks and while I paint. I needed a spiritual practice re-set to rebuild confidence that I lost while doing a commission. I found that it wasn’t about the work but my mindset needed an overhaul. I had some unhealed wounds from childhood as we all do, but I had not faced these and it was during a commission painting that the sense of shame and fear of disappointing the client, and a codependent streak in me all reared thier ugly heads. I had friends who were expressing their concern that I was taking too long on a painting i continued to restart and for no real reason but it was never enough in my mind. I have poured hours of listening and reading into my earpods to listen to some inspirational leaders, psychologists and coaches and the results are showing up. I joined a mastermind group and we had a mini group of four and these three women were honest and called me on my refusal to look at the real problem. My paintings flow and when they dont I do a collage to reset, then I get back into the flow. I have coaches helping me now that I have given up my studio outside of the home. I am so excited and passionate about learning about how important my mindset is and the need for regulating my nervous system so I can relax into my work. It makes such a difference! Some of my favorite sources for my healing journey are: on line coaching and courses with Antrese Wood and Marina Granger, Ekaterina Popova, Alicia Puig, Victoria J Fry and Gita Joshi. I have worked with Yana Beylinson faithfully for almost four years. She has been not only spiritually enlightening but she has helped me learn to use photoshop and other tools in preparing references for commissions as well as sizing photos to enter in magazines and exhibits. Books:

Playing Big by Tara Mohr, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach,BIg Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.debcookshapiro.com/
• Instagram: @debcookshapiro I paintings

Image Credits
Natalie Nesser