David Shrobe was born in New York in 1974 and currently lives and works in New York, with a longstanding artistic practice rooted in Harlem. He received his BFA and MFA in Painting from Hunter College and is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He was also a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Teaching Fellow. Harlem’s rich African American cultural and historical heritage, together with his family’s longstanding connection to the neighborhood, has profoundly shaped his artistic practice.

Shrobe is known for his distinctive use of mixed-media collage and assemblage. He incorporates found objects—including discarded furniture, wood, wallpaper, textiles, and antique frames—often sourced from around his family home in Harlem and other locations, deconstructing and reassembling them as integral elements of his works. Carrying traces of time and everyday life, these materials serve as vehicles for exploring family memory, history, and identity. Drawing on and transforming the conventions of Western classical portraiture, Shrobe combines figuration and abstraction, painting and collage, to construct new narratives around Black subjects and reconsider their place within art history.

Shrobe’s works are held in major institutional and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Birmingham Museum of Art, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, NSU Art Museum, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Collection, and The Dean Collection, among others.