BIO
Keith Sklar (b. New York) currently lives and works in Chicago. He earned an MA from NYU Steinhardt School in New York and a BA from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He has lived and worked in New York, Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and these communities have helped shape his path as an artist. His solo exhibitions include: P.P.O.W, (NY); Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica; Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, (LA); Dorsch Gallery, Miami; and Giampietro Gallery, New Haven. Notable group exhibitions include: Suffering From Realness at Mass MoCA (2019); Strange at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2019); Wallpainting at University of Texas at San Antonio (2005); LA at Kaus at Kaus Australis, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2005); SouthwestNET: PHX/LA at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (2004); Made in California: Art, Image and Identity, 1900-2000, at LA County Museum of Art, CA (2001), and LA: Post Cool at San Jose Museum of Art (2001).
Sklar’s works are in the collections of SFMoMA, Oakland Museum of California and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Sklar’s grants and awards include: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency on Captiva (2014), Brooklyn Arts Council, Arts in Education grant. (2012); California Arts Council (CAC) Fellowship in Visual Arts (Painting) and multiple CAC Artist-in-Communities Grants. Selected Press and media include: LA Times, NY Times, Gorky’s Granddaughter, Boston Globe, SF Chronicle, Arizona Republic, San Diego Union Tribune, LA Weekly, Art in America and ARTnews. Early in his career, Sklar focused on creating public murals in Oakland and San Francisco. Two of these projects, Mitzvah and Grand Performance (co-created with Daniel Galvez) were declared Oakland City Landmarks.
Restoration of the Landmark Grand Performance Mural (1984), headed by collaborating artist Daniel Galvez, is scheduled to begin October 1, 2026. Funding for the Grand Performance mural restoration project has raised over $90,00 to date, from public, private and individual sponsors. Please see Early Public Artworks pages for more information about the history and restoration of the Grand Performance mural and ways to become involved.
An educator as well as an artist, Sklar has taught Art and Arts Integration to people across learning styles, identities, cultural backgrounds and age; from grades 6-12 through undergrad and graduate school levels, in public and independent schools, museums and community-based settings, including: Otis College of Art and Design (LA), LA County High School for the Arts, Wesleyan University (CT), MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, North Shore Country Day (IL) and Opportunities for All, Chicago. Currently he is a Teaching Artist with After School Matters, Chicago. 0
ABOUT
Keith Sklar’s practice as an artist is based primarily in painting in oil, digital giclée prints, installation and drawing. Slipping realities between abstract and representation; flatness and volume, materiality and digital, Sklar’s process is intuitive. In works ranging in scale from miniature to monumental, layers of paint material and a wide diversity styles, techniques, imagery, rhythms, and marks are built up, covered over, revealed and altered. A liminal process veering off course on the beaten path, tried out, felt right, lost the scent, carved away, winds changed, dug in, wondered if, wrapped up and fine tuned. Until, at the exact moment that artist-as-creator and artist-as-viewer settled their differences and established a workable, if tenuous, understanding. In retrospect, upon completion, what had always been necessary is finally expressed. The essential throughline in Sklar’s work is the act and action of witness. Expressing, documenting his shifting position and identities within acts of self-reflection, aware of their own complicity and resistance to historic interconnections between inequity, wealth, violence and mass-media.
When viewing Sklar’s artworks, one is welcomed to move their body through physical space, to wander, to dive into, experience in their own ways, And remember later,