Keith Zahra grew up drawing in his family’s basement from the age of five. Started taking traditional oil paintings lessons at the age of eight and around High School time in the 80s, he started painting album covers on jean jackets for his classmates. He also airbrushed, glass etched, screen printed and admired pen and ink drawings. No surface was safe. After barely getting out of high school he tortured himself by going back to school and received from School of Visual Arts in NYC a BFA in Editorial Illustration. Graduating in 1992 he kicked his feet around for about a year and decided to stay local to his hometown where he grew up, Peekskill, NY.

Worked for a sign maker and became a member of several local art organizations. He helped put on art shows and events in Peekskill. Later he rented a beautiful artist loft which was specially zoned by City of Peekskill for an artist live/work space which also could be legally opened to the public as an art gallery. Zahra started to make a good living doing murals for different companies like Audi Corp. but still not satisfied with the imagery he was creating for clients he decided to switch back his clientele and go back to hanging with some old friends and start tattooing. In 1997 Zahra converted the back of his artist loft into a tattoo studio and in the front was his personal art studio and gallery. Being self trained in tattooing and trying to run a business he had some ups and downs but eventually everything smoothed out and Zahra Studio became very successful, too successful and unfortunately there was already a strict probation against tattooing in Peekskill. So in October 2000 he moved his operations to Beacon, NY, and opened the doors to rotating art shows for different artists and genres in a tattoo studio. Creating one of the first such businesses on the east coast, a mixture between fine arts and tattooing in one unique space.

Besides Keith's tattooing and gallery curetting recent outside projects, include an appearance of his tattoos in Kenneth Anger's latest project, Mouse Heaven 2005, a short film, which was not only funded by the Museum of Modern Art N.Y.C. it has been shown in most major museums on the east and west coast. It was also part of the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennale 2006. Also he was able to fulfill one dream of his and do an illustration for a horror movie poster, which was done for the one and only B-rated horror movie maker Ted V. Mikels, called The Cauldron 2004.