Sonya
Sklaroff
Featured in: "Primordium:
Where it all Begins"
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Instagram: @sonyasklaroff
website: www.sonyasklaroff.com
Biography
Sonya Sklaroff lives and works in New York City. Her paintings have been exhibited worldwide and are part of prestigious public and private collections, including the Phillips Museum of Art, the Consul General of France, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Clarins USA, Fannie Mae, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of State, and the Cahoon Museum of Art. Sklaroff earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Parsons School of Design. She has participated in numerous artist residencies, including the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s World Views Project, where she had a studio on the 91st floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center.
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In 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her publications include “Sonya Sklaroff” (2014) with an introduction by Harlan Coben, “Pandemic Paintings” (2021) with a preface by Rachael Ray, “A Love Letter to New York City” (2022), and “Escape to the Garden” (2024), featuring over 70 garden and flower paintings completed during her travels. Sklaroff’s significant solo exhibitions include “Secrets of New York” at The Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in 2023, accompanied by a catalog with a foreword by theoretical physicist and best-selling author Lisa Randall, and “NoHo Art Nexus: Outside In” in 2024, which transformed her NoHo neighborhood into a vast personal art gallery with 19 different locations exhibiting her works.
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Additionally, Sklaroff was commissioned by The Lambs, America’s oldest professional theatrical club on 5th Avenue, to paint a portrait of the club’s first female member, making her the first female artist to receive such an honor at the club.
Statement
Making art is my purpose. More than just what I do, art is a big part of who I am. Painting is how I express my true self, the authentic me.
Sometimes people ask how I find inspiration. I don’t. Inspiration finds me. I can wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and find that it is inspiration looking back at me, as somehow the face reflected just doesn’t feel familiar and I paint it to capture that unnerving feeling. Months into the pandemic I came across my neighbor who hadn’t shaved since the lockdown began – the portrait begged to be painted. Trapped in my apartment with the city shut down, I daydreamed of going dancing. So ballroom dancing on a twilit rooftop emerged on my canvas.
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I often roam the city with my sketchbook and watercolor set, searching for something to catch my eye. Lately, I’ve been intrigued by the "in between" moments—small glimpses of life that happen when you least expect them. It’s like peering through an iron gate into an urban garden and witnessing an intimate conversation, or glancing up at a lit window in the evening to see someone reading by lamplight, and wondering about their life. I often use these sketches and on-site watercolor paintings as inspiration for my larger oil on canvas works in my studio.
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How fortunate I am to know, without question, my role in this world. How grateful I am to find so many people who relate to the stories I tell through my work. How lucky I am that my art allows me to draw creativity from the world around us in times both good and bad.