Carol
Swinney lives on a large cattle ranch outside of Casper, Wyoming where
she was born and raised. Her companions include a horse, several dogs
and cats and the diverse wildlife that she sees everyday. This
environment, fostered by her family's love of the outdoors and the
cattle ranch life, gave her a deep rooted love of the West, its
wildlife, people and landscape. Carol works primarily on location which
she feels is essential to capture the correct lighting and colors as
well as the essence and feelings of the moment. All her work is in oil
and done exclusively with a palette knife with use of brush only for
needed detail on animals and architecture.
Carol
paints with a palette knife instead of a brush for many reasons.
"I love texture, and love to see a lot of paint on the canvas.
A palette knife gives incredible depth, like you're sculpting a
painting", she says. "I'm always using clean, pure
colors without any risk of muddy colors. When you're on location
you're wasting time cleaning brushes." Swinney prefers to
paint on location at such places as Point Lobos State Reserve in
California, the mountains near Tucson, Arizona or the Grand Tetons in
Wyoming.
The
well traveled artist has won numerous awards and honors for her work as
well as many solo shows and group exhibitions over the past several
years. Her awards include People’s Choice award at the 2002
annual Nicolaysen Art Museum Art Show in Casper, Wyoming. She has
had 15 paintings in the prestigious “Arts for the Parks” National
Art Contest during the past several years, and received an Honorable
Mention at the 2003 Carmel Arts Festival and was awarded the “Jury’s
Top Fifty” from the Salon International 2003, International Museum of
Contemporary Masters of Fine Art. She has two museum shows scheduled for
2004, the Nicolaysen Art Museum and the Old West Museum, both in Wyoming.
Carol
was the Artist-in-Residence at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in
Jackson, Wyoming in January 2003 and was one of the ten finalists in the
2002 International Artist magazine’s Annual Landscape
Competition. Carol is a signature member of Oil Painters of America and
has exhibited her work in 4 out of 5 of the last National OPA
Exhibitions; was an invited out-of-state artist at the California Art
Club’s 93rd Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition held at the new
Pasadena Museum of California Art. She was featured in the July 2003
issue of American Artist magazine, the August 2003 issue of The
Artist’s Magazine, and Southwest Art magazine included
Carol in their February 2003 “Artists to Watch” section. She also
has been featured in Art-Talk, Wildlife Art News and did a recent
one page profile and cover for SkyWest Magazine.
Carol
is represented by Astoria Fine Art in Jackson Hole, WY, Paint
Horse Gallery in Breckenridge, CO, Loch Vale Fine Art in Estes Park, CO,
Galleries West in Jackson, WY, and Eric Firestone Gallery in Tucson, AZ.
She is an out-of-state, artist member of the CAC, artist member of LPAPA,
TPAPS and a signature member of the RMPAP.
