A graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University with a BFA in painting, Skerritt creates abstract works that often highlight environmental patterns she has observed, including parallels between natural systems such as rivers and forests and the systems of the human body. As she writes in her artist statement: “The body responds to the knowledge of its inward and outward congruence with the patterns of trees and streams and cellular shapes, watery pools, electrical circuitry, the entire abundance of appearances. The hands respond by shaping surfaces that are simultaneously appearing to be biological, geological, anatomical, metallic, and/or fluid.”
Having traveled globally, Skerritt is deeply influenced by both what cultures have in common and what is unique to them. Her observational practices led her to develop an orientation she calls the radical gaze, which she defines as at-the-root perception that moves her beyond what is merely objective. This is a response to encounters with the person and art of the Transcendental Realism artist, Adi Da, whose work and writings have profoundly shaped Skerritt's orientation to art and life, as well as her intention “to connect the viewer beyond the surface to the substance or process that underlies appearances, to approach a vision of that most fundamental truth or source condition”.
