Millie Shapiro

Millicent Ada MacCorkindale Shapiro

Birth: October 18, 1937 in Mineola, Nassau County, New York

Death: April 6, 2026 in Victoria, B.C.

Plot: Row S – Plot 5

Biography:
The following eulogy was given by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough
Millie was a Long Islander who died a Vancouver Islander.  Living on two Islands near the sea, be it Atlantic or Pacific, seems fitting for this woman who filled her paintings with splashes and waves of bold and gorgeous colour. Millie was a woman who lived and loved on her terms. She was, dare I say, a tough, sometimes prickly, opinionated and brave soul.

Lucinda lent me a photo of Millie – she is probably in her 30’s: already emotionally weathered, a fierce determined gaze, her eyes eking out a strength culled from some private grief. The day she died, I wandered around the house with Lucinda, and there was Millie, in her rooster guise, those same fierce eyes, demanding to be seen. I could hear her cackle and crow from the wall.

“I thought that I would be an artist and a waitress because that’s what you did… Teaching didn’t appeal to me, but children did.” And Millie did became a mother – yet her art continued to be a demanding force for her attention. When Lucinda was 6, Millie, Ben and Lucinda moved to Victoria. By 1978 Millie showed her work, and her work began to fill rooms across the world.

Her style is so distinctive – before I met Millie, I recognized a Shapiro. Women – their auras dancing in swirling light. Strength and vulnerability vied with each other, in swaths of gossamer colour. Chartreuse, pinks, dark backgrounds, and light filled interiors. Occasionally slightly sentimental, most of her work was what might be termed Factual Impressionism: Her women demanded – look me in the eye.

When I spoke words about Millie’s husband, Ben Shapiro, at his burial, I noted words from one of our daily prayers:
בָּרוךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵנוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, יוֹצֵר אוֹר וּבוֹרֵא חשֶׁךְ

עֹשֶֹה שָׁלוֹם וּבוֹרֵא אֶת הַכֹּל… בָּרוךְ אַתָּה, יְיָ, יוֹצֵר הַמְּאוֹרוֹת

Blessed are you, God our God, Ruler of the universe, who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates all things… Blessed are you, God, who forms light.

God created light and fashioned darkness, and in doing so created Seder, an order in Creation. Millie and Bennet, each in their own way searched for light and explored darkness. For Millie, painting was her entrée to God, to light, to the dark potential of Creation.

I’m going to step back and let Millie speak for herself again,  “Painting was ‘a state of being’ and ‘the dance you do in life.’ “If I did not paint there would be something missing in my life – the absence of contact with my inside friend, the soother that joins my perception and movement in painting…I really don’t know where I’m going but something inside does.”

So here we are today, laying Millie into this ground, shifting her from light now into that darkness of earth, that holds and shapes all life. 

Millie died during Pesach, she passed over into this unknown realm that is a mystery to us all. For Lucinda, the loss of her beloved mother is the deepest of loss. We talked about the challenges mothers and daughters face as they navigate this most complicated relationship.

We can feel untethered in this loss, untethered from that invisible yet present umbilical cord. Millie knew, all our mothers know, they need to let us go, fundamentally and finally, somehow knowing that it is only in their death we are allowed to begin our own uncharted path, paint our own lives.

Millie wasn’t easy. She wasn’t timid. She was a force. She and Bennett would roil in their relationship – but always, finally, as Lucinda noticed, with some kind of comic ironic madness that saved the crockery. They were tough, they were fierce, they battled it out. Theirs was an intimacy the likes of George and Martha; that central core of cold hard truth their holy grail.

Millie Shapiro: She left us her legacy of work. And she left her legacy of love. In life and in death.

Spouse:
Bennett “Ben” Shapiro (1932-2021)

Child:
Lucinda Komisar