PORTFOLIO PAINTING

CARR I E SWIM

“Memory is dictated by pre-existing realities, whereas abstraction un-limits those associations, letting the core of a being speak with less constraint and circumspection.”

Born in Houston, Texas, Carrie Swim embraces every creative tool possible to process life’s rhythms with an unbreakable sense of curiosity and wonder. She has developed a keen sense of adventure and adaptation through her diverse surroundings. Her work pulses beauty and humanity, bridging gaps in the human experience with visible fluidities, supple and dream-like, reaching outward with a colorful palette that brims with brightness and hope. Her works bring people to each other and themselves as emotions are at the forefront of the works experientially. Carrie’s abstract style breathes with lyricism and is informed by movement and sound. She uses an ever-evolving visual language sourced from classical training in representational drawing, painting, and printmaking that she gained through her BFA at Baylor University and her studies in Italy. Her style is advanced by her Master’s at the University of Kansas and her seven-year journey in New York City, where she began to harness a greater tangibility to the abstraction. In her studio practice, you will find Carrie developing largescale, ethereal abstract oil and acrylic paintings or experimenting with new methods in mixed media. She is constantly exploring and open to problem-solving creative opportunities with new materials and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her paintings are born of dance interlaced with painting, a process she calls “body painting.” Carrie lets her own body receive paint like a brush from her hands to her skin and leotard. She moves with sound through time, guided by the spirit within and beyond her. Establishing a composition and roadmap for her paintings with each contact her body makes with the canvas. Her movements unite the whole of her being as she channels the interplay between humanity and the divine in an intentional yet childlike way. As much as Carrie responds to the human figure, she responds to land. She will often begin her projects by bringing her materials outside to react directly with the elements of nature and the land itself, constantly challenging the limits of paint. Carrie carries something with her to make art wherever she goes, truly capitalizing on the opportunity to embrace the world through the tools of her trade. Carrie finds organic forms of nature and man to provide a hidden visual language she reveals in her works and fearlessly looks straight into the heart of man and all of creation, dealing with its cracks and brokenness as with its gold and beauty. Carrie constantly reaches farther to other disciplines and fine arts communities. She collaborates with dance collectives in New York and Houston and facilitates healing and trauma-informed art workshops worldwide. Her heart is ready to learn and share art’s unifying power for all. She is represented by Off the Wall Gallery. www.offthewallgallery.com