Kianja Strobert

Painter Kianja Strobert uses a variety of unlikely materials to realize raw, expressionistic canvases. Her practice explores how painting, sculpture, and architecture intersect with mark-making; in addition to paint, Strobert has been known to use pumice, sand, flexible LED wire, cinderblocks, and gilded animal bones. Her works are characterized by splashes and swathes of color put to canvas with overt physicality, as traces of fingers or the smear of blunt tools make themselves apparent. Strobert's pieces also frequently feature colorful borders or partitions (ordering devices), and her experiments with installation art are concerned with the role of the artist—indeed, overall, Strobert’s dynamic practice is defined by questions regarding with what it means to be a "maker."

Strobert was born in 1980, in New York City. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004 and then earned her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2006.  She has shown her work throughout the U.S. in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. In 2012, the Santa Monica Museum of Art mounted her first solo museum exhibition. She lives and works in Hudson, New York.