Daniel Shapiro was born and raised in New Jersey. After attending high school in Northern Virginia and college in Maryland he found work in the Washington, D.C., area. Most notable of his many jobs, Shapiro worked in the exhibition design department of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which he left to pursue a master’s degree in painting at SCAD. Upon completion of his degree, he and his partner moved back north to Pittsburgh, Pa., to be closer to family. Shapiro’s work mainly consists of Western and cowboy-themed imagery despite never having lived out West. His preoccupation with cowboys and the West started as an undergrad after viewing a television commercial featuring rodeo clowns in a minivan. The contrast between the iconic male cowboy archetype and the icon of modern domesticity, the minivan, struck a cord with the work he was creating at the time. Since then the cowboy and Western theme has become his primary focus.