BIOGRAPHY
Education
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
BFA/Art Education Certification
1998
University of Wisconsin - Madison
1994-1996
Books
Ink, Oil 2009 - 2016
by Shakti Kroopkin and Celia Luz
SHAKTI KROOPKIN
selected works 1996 - 2009
by Shakti Kroopkin and Kevin P. Hogan
A Published Gallery
77 Amazing Artists from around
the world under one cover
Press
2018 Santa Fe Arts Journal
Mysteries of Nature Through Urban Language,
Shakti Kroopkin
2/18 Santa Fe, NM
2018 New Mexico Reporter
Three Questions with Shakti Kroopkin
2/18 Santa Fe, NM
2017 Santa Fe New Mexican
Beyond the Wall: Street Art Comes Inside
11/17 Santa Fe, NM
2017 Axle Contemporary
4/17 Santa Fe, NM
2009 SFReeper.com
L’Art Pour L'Art:
Shakti Kroopkin Paints Liberation, an interview
10/09 Santa Fe, NM
Contemporary artist Shakti Kroopkin, born in Chicago 1976, began painting in oils at the age of seven. Shakti graduated from the world-renowned School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. Kroopkin has shown in over 50 galleries and art shows across the country and is internationally collected. She is currently showing with Walter Wickiser Gallery, NY, NY, Keep Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM, Gallery 13/Starlight Arts in Minneapolis, MN and Jezebel Gallery, Madrid, NM.
Shakti is a mentor and active member of the Santa Fe Society of Artists. She is a contract based certified art educator and teaches abstract art workshops in her studio. Kroopkin has taught at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Warehouse 21, Santa Fe Public Schools and the Tarnoff Art Center. She is a live painting performer at music and art events.
Shakti's abstract "shapespaces" are rooted in her memories of the Chicago cityscape in combination with the vast raw beauty of New Mexico where she currently resides. The artist's process exposes luminous spirit, imagination and movement while being grounded in her unique visual language of reoccurring lines, shapes, color and symbols. The raw expression of emotion and energy traverses the limitations of the finite world, inviting the viewer on a journey offering the freedom of infinite play.
Kroopkin is working in painting using sumi ink and oil, and in sculpture using steel and enamel. Her artwork reminds us of abstract artists such as Joan Miro, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Wassily Kandinsky, Hans Hoffman, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, and Robert Motherwell, as well as primitive African Art, Street Art, and Zen Brush painting.