Adam Shapiro - Artist on Hydra Island Greece

Adam is a figurative artist, and more recently has been exploring abstract work, who splits his time between Hydra, India and Canada

Bright Valley, Dark Sky

(Private Collectioin)
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Large Valley Sketch, Crescent Moon

(Private Collection)
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Autobiographical

"My mother was and is a painter, still working away at 98. I have very early memories of her in her painter's smock, the palettes with globs of paint, the smell of turpentine and oils, and the walls covered with paintings by her and by others.

At the age of nine I produced a small watercolour which for some reason excited my grade four teacher. I remember it was of the desert by the Nile. After that early success I didn’t really try my hand again until I was in post secondary school (age 17/18). Painting was one of my subjects but I was more focused on writing at that time.

I also tried acting and after playing the disturbed adolescent Alan, in Peter Schaffer’s play, Equis, I was suddenly offered an invite by a professor at the school, to pass by Hydra where she and her family had rented a house. I don’t know why my performance prompted the invitation but I am sure it was the cause.

Adam Shapiro, self portrait - Artist on Hydra Island Greece.

Later she and her husband declared, with mild guilt, that they felt that Hydra had ruined my life. Also a little while earlier, my painting teacher had declared that she saw me as a goat grazing on the hillside of a Greek island. These signs and a general urge for change led me to land on Hydra in July 76.

I remember my first hours on the island vividly. I was climbing up and down the steep stairways looking for the house where my professor was. It was the middle of a hot summer day and I was carrying all my scruffy possessions in an even scruffier army surplus backpack. A few kind souls offered me water.

Eventually I discovered, at Bill's Bar, that the five digits on the address was in fact a telephone number. Next thing I knew I was living in a lovely house all to myself as my hosts had left for a two week trip.

Reading J Krishnamurti and asking myself all sorts of questions about all sorts of concepts while gazing out at the landscape had me convinced that Hydra was place that I could live in and think some more.

In 1977 I inherited some oil paints and brushes from a departing painter. My first painting was of a chapel steeple, deep red against a very blue sky. I brought that work back to Canada where I traded it for a silk and wool scarf from a weaver that I had met. The scarf was eventually lost on the Hydra hillside and found by an old retired fisherman, around whose neck I let it be.

The first painting I exhibited was in 1978. It was hung over the bar at Bill's Bar, and was bought by Mario who had his own bar and restaurant, The Bahia, around the corner. Mario still comes to the island. I meet him on the stairways sometimes, but I haven’t asked him if he still has the painting.

The valley between Kamini and Vlichos has been my main motif when constructing my landscapes. It contains a magical harmony of forms, combining the vital elements of land, water and sky. The 'valley' can certainly be said to be an obsession, and if not the central subject of a painting it often finds its way into a composition. The house on Hydra where I now live, does not look onto the valley, but luckily a good view is but a few dozen steps away and so I can satisfy my urge without too much effort. Still lifes are like a personal memory, capturing a collection familiar things in a moment of a lived space.

In India I have been painting in a similar way but within my Indian context. Primary subject matter is the garden which I have planted and nurtured, and the boulders, river and hills which frame the garden.

Artist Adam Shapiro - artists on Hydra Island Greece, original paintings for sale.

Five years ago I began to paint abstract compositions, which initially arose from contemplation of my palettes. The first composition I made in a larger format (80 x120 cm) was a commission. The final work was rejected but it got me started."