Anneli Skaar

Bio

A first generation American, Anneli Skaar (b. 1969) still holds a strong connection to her ancestral home in Scandinavia. Fluent in Norwegian, she moved to Norway from the San Francisco Bay Area, California, at 18, to attend the National Academy of Arts in Oslo where she received her BA. During this time, she lived and worked in the studio of renowned Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum where she discovered her love of representational art and oil painting, both of which would greatly influence her creative work in the next decades.

After a career of illustration and design, she debuted her work as a painter in 2014, when she had her first solo show ICEHARDSHIPBEAUTY.  Since then, her art has been a primary focus and she has exhibited locally and abroad, and has continued to find inspiration in the landscapes of Maine as well as in the arctic.

Skaar has participated in residencies at Galleri Svalbard at 78 degrees north in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway in 2015; as well as a residency onboard an EIMSKIP container ship traveling from Portland, ME to Reykjavik, Iceland in 2016. She has gathered material for her work in Ilulissat, Greenland, in 2017, at the site of the largest, active glacier in the northern hemisphere and was awarded the Maine Media Workshop’s Book Artist in Residency in 2016 for which she produced the fine art book Bears and Ruins. Skaar has also produced numerous talks and articles related to her work and travels in arctic regions.

Skaar currently holds the position of Creative Director for the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, and is responsible for all branding, exhibition design, and publications for the museum. When she is not working at the Farnsworth, she exhibits regularly and continues to paint and produce multimedia work.

Anneli Skaar makes her home in Camden, Maine.