Sky Glabush

Sky Glabush was born in 1970 in Alert Bay, British Columbia, Canada. He earned a BFA in Fine Arts and English with High Honours from the University of Saskatchewan in 1996, followed by a graduate degree from the University of Alberta in 2006, described by his university faculty page as an MFA and by several gallery biographies as an MA. He now lives and works in rural southwestern Ontario, based in London, Ontario, where he holds a faculty position as Associate Professor of Visual Art, teaching studio painting at Western University.

Glabush is best known as a painter, working primarily in oil on canvas alongside watercolor and gouache on paper, and pieces built on woven or constructed supports. His imagery moves between figuration and abstraction, and the critic Sarah Milroy has connected his paintings to early twentieth century European traditions, citing Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke and the work of Nolde, Kirchner, Munch, Kupka, and Klee as points of reference. Wikipedia identifies Glabush as a follower of the Baha'i faith and describes that faith as significant to his work, though this detail is corroborated by only one source in the available dossier.

His exhibition history spans more than a decade, from an early solo show at MKG127 in Toronto in 2017 through recent solo exhibitions at Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles and Stephen Friedman Gallery in London and New York. His work entered the National Gallery of Canada's collection, with pieces shown there in 2020, and it is also held by university and corporate collections including the Ivey Business School and the Harvard Business School's Schwartz Art Collection.

Critical attention to Glabush has tended to focus on the formal and historical range of his painting. Sarah Milroy, writing for Stephen Friedman Gallery, has situated his paintings within the lineage of early twentieth century German and Central European modernism, an association that recurs across gallery and institutional texts describing his work as figurative with an undercurrent of abstraction. His work has also received sustained critical attention in publications such as Border Crossings, which has addressed the material and formal range of his painting practice. That critical framing has been matched by sustained institutional interest, including inclusion in the National Gallery of Canada's collection and use of his work in university and corporate art collections.

Glabush's market runs almost entirely through primary gallery sales rather than the secondary auction market. He is represented by Philip Martin Gallery in Los Angeles and Stephen Friedman Gallery in London and New York, and he is also listed as an artist by Alison Jacques in London. He has historically been associated with Clint Roenisch Gallery in Toronto, though recent, direct confirmation that this representation is still current was not found. At the Untitled Art Houston fair in September 2025, Philip Martin Gallery was reported to have sold one of his paintings for USD 25,000 during the VIP opening, an indicator of current primary market pricing, though this specific figure rests on a single published report and could not be independently cross-verified.

Public secondary market activity is limited and inconsistently documented. Auction database searches surfaced two low-value results attributed to the artist at Heffel, the Canadian auction house: a work titled Tree in Studio for CAD 2,250, said to have sold in March 2024, and a set of three encaustic paintings for CAD 1,250, said to have sold in January 2020. Corroborating sources for these two results were mixed in quality, so they are presented here as a low-confidence signal rather than a confirmed auction record. A work attributed to the artist also appeared in a benefit auction at White Columns in New York, though no confirmed final sale price could be located there. No all-time auction record for the artist could be confirmed as of this profile's data date.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Sky Glabush, and no certificate of authenticity program has surfaced in public sources, so provenance and verification run primarily through his representing galleries. His auction footprint is thin and inconsistently documented: a small number of low-value results have surfaced at Heffel in Canada, but sourcing on these is mixed and no confirmed all-time record could be established, and a benefit-auction listing at White Columns likewise does not amount to a competitive auction record. Collectors should treat current gallery and fair prices, rather than any auction data point, as the more reliable read on his market, and should note that his gallery representation has recently broadened to include Alison Jacques in London, a signal of rising institutional interest that has not yet been tested at auction. Bio details from otherwise reliable sources still disagree on whether his 2006 Alberta degree was an MFA or an MA, and no source in the available research gives his exact birth date beyond the year 1970.