GLOUCESTER, MA.- Aithan Shapira, an abstract landscape painter residing in Allston, MA, is the second of four artists selected to participate in the Rocky Neck Residency Program. He will introduce himself and show slides of his work at a talk at the Bryan Gallery, 53 Rocky Neck Ave. on Thursday, June 29 at 7 pm.

During his Rocky Neck Residency Shapira proposes to “make a suite of paintings addressing the ways in which we tame, cage, and manipulate nature in attempts to capture its sacredness. … Participating in critical dialogue with diverse artists will immeasurably benefit the realization of this project and contribute to contemporary discourse within the community.”

The Residency artists were selected because they demonstrate high-level accomplishment, originality, and seriousness of purpose. The program includes prime studio/gallery/living space in Rocky Neck, opportunities to lecture and show their work, and access to the rich cultural community of Rocky Neck and Cape Ann.

As a first-generation American who spent his earliest years in Jerusalem, Shapira has a strong religious, political and familial tie to the land. “The overwhelming loss in American culture of this conviction for the divinity of nature is of primary concern to my work,” says Shapira. “With the momentum of my recent MFA candidacy at Boston University, the Rocky Neck Art Colony Summer Residency is an unmatched opportunity to directly engage with this issue salient to current academic and political debates.”

Shapira’s inquiries began during his undergraduate Fine Arts thesis at Brandeis University, in which he explored the symbol of the “American Dream”: the romantic landscape, imbued with concepts of infinity, opportunity, and fantasy. He addressed these questions again during his post-baccalaureate painting studies, where having traveled again to Israel, he found himself tackling issues of nostalgia, memory, and abstraction of sight, specific to the location considered to have been the Garden of Eden, Ein Gedi. In response, he learned to fly single-engine airplanes and painted directly from landscape to study experiential differences between on-site and memory-driven painting. Engaging with Joseph Campbell’s writings on myths and sacrifice, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and Hero of Alexandria’s Pneumatics, his Master’s Thesis revealed civilization’s changes as detritus against the power of nature, conveying personal concepts of religion, safety, and escape with ladders, gears, altars, birds, and childhood toys.

Shapira holds an MFA in painting from Boston University and a BA in painting from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. He has received numerous awards including first place in painting at the Danforth Museum Members Show, 2006; the Constain Alajalov Scholarship, 2004-2006 and the Louis P. Rabinovitz Art Award, 2002.