Walking in Campbells Creek | Carol Swain
Carol Swain is a visual artist based in Castlemaine, previously from Melbourne.
Carol completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts Honours Painting in 2023 at Latrobe University Bendigo. In 2012 she Completed a Master of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts; and in 2011 completed a Graduate Diploma of Visual Art at Victorian College of the Arts receiving The Langridge Oil Painting Prize Award. She completed a Diploma of Visual Art, Tafe – CAE – in 2001 –Melbourne.
Carol has shown her works in both solo and group exhibitions in Melbourne and Castlemaine. She works predominately in the medium of oil painting, but also has a background in print making.
In 2013, she enrolled in the Art Room Open Studios Program in Footscray, further developing her practice by way of workshops run by the Art Room.
Carol has completed two Residencies – March 2016 – Cowwarr Art Space – Gippsland. August 2018 – studio Kura Japan on the Island of Kyushu. Exploring the rural environment through abstraction, colour and form.
Moving to Campbells Creek, Carol began exploring and closely observing the bush whilst regularly walking in her surrounds. It is a time to be, where she experiences an awareness of being a settler woman and mindful visitor on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Carol acknowledges her deep respect and honour for their connection to culture, and elders past, present and future. She feels a sense of peace when entering Dja Dja Wurrung Country.
Carols research in her honours year 2023, investigated how contemporary landscape painting can operate beyond the notion of the picturesque to be concerned with something other than a depiction of horizon line and the pictorial conventions of linear perspective; giving Carol time and space to further push and explore her painting practice as she engaged with forms, shapes, and space within the bush, opening other ways of perceiving the environment, also allowing time to delve intellectually by way of reading, deepening her understanding with regard to the questions she had painting the landscape.
Artists Carol has explored in 2023, have been Amy Sillman an American Abstract Artist, Lesley Vance, an American Abstract Artist, Greg Creek, a Melbourne Artist; Ember Fairburn- Melbourne Artist, and Melissa Boughey a South Australian Artist.
