Anneli Skaar

Bio

Anneli Skaar (b. 1969) is a first generation American, artist and designer, with a strong connection to her ancestral home in Scandinavia. Fluent in Norwegian, Anneli moved to Norway from California at 18, to attend the National Academy of Arts in Oslo where she received her B.A. After living and working in Oslo, Norway for over a decade, she returned to the Northeast and has since made midcoast Maine her home. Skaar's work is exhibited at galleries in Maine and Norway.

Skaar 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 went to Ilulissat, Greenland in 2017 to paint and study the largest active glacier in the northern hemisphere. She was awarded the Maine Media Workshop’s Book Artist in Residency in 2016, for which she produced the fine art book Bears and Ruins. She is currently working on a book for Two Ponds Press.

Skaar has presented numerous talks and articles related to her work and travels in arctic regions, including at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art and in Maine Boats Homes and Harbors.

Skaar is the Creative Director at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. 

"I work primarily in oils, and common themes in my work include solitude, modern day isolation, and a yearning for connection and the sacred through natural landscapes and seascapes. These are very often represented by arctic vistas which are informed by the frequent study trips I have taken over the past several years north to Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. Very often my paintings, drawings, and prints are observational studies re-imagined to a dreamlike world, set in the twilight hours between light and darkness, where future resolutions and possibilities are ambiguous and undefined."