TRISH SHWART
  • Portfolio
    • 2023 This Particular Place in the World
    • After and then After
    • 2023 Landscapes are a Marker of Time
    • Stolen Moments
    • Landscape Paintings
    • 2015 The Sleep Factory
    • 2015 Tell Me A Story - A Diorama
    • 2012 Life Diagrams
    • 2002 In Pursuit of Success
    • EXHIBITIONS
    • Statement & Bio
Artist Statement and Bio 
 
STATEMENT 
Sometimes I just want to tear my hair out when I think about what is happening to our natural world. I feel

helpless.  What will happen if we don’t do something?  Oddly, I find a weird comfort in thinking about how a 

place like Toronto would look if all the people disappeared.  In geological time human tenure is insignificant.

The natural world would re-establish its authority.  Lost species and our current moribund beauty would be replaced with

something fresh and new. 
​


Deciding to make a painting about the landscape during the Anthropocene is complicated. It is impossible to ignore

Landscape as the nexus of political forces, fuel economics, and indigenous rights. Artistic tradition uses the landscape

to represent the sublime. But I also see the landscape, certainly on the west coast, as part of the everyday. In

Vancouver a concrete factory is located at the edge of the ocean. Painting the landscape is fraught with conflict before

I make a mark. 

 
Living where I do on the western edge of the continent, and surrounded by natural beauty, I crave a strong unmediated

experience with nature. But it is a struggle. My responses are filtered by my physical body (my foot is uncomfortable, I

​have a cold), my mind (unwanted thoughts appear) and the political reality of the world around me (climate migration).  

Is there something in my nature that restricts my ability to be one with the landscape?  Is this just me or is it familiar

to others?
 

I began my Landscape as a Marker of Time paintings in 2021 with the idea of exploring the feeling of separation from

the beauty of nature. Instead, they have become a documentation of my slow acceptance that a climate transformation

is happening. And I notice that these changes are becoming part of our natural beauty.  Pollutants in the air result in

more colourful sunsets for example.


These paintings and the accompanying transition in my thinking have led to the start of a new body of work. Looking at

the landscape in the precarious now. 


 
“To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.” 
 Robin Wall Kimmerer
 


ARTIST BIO

Raised in Winnipeg Manitoba (Treaty One Territory) Trish Shwart is currently based on Lkwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ Territories (Victoria, BC).  She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a gold medal and from the Emily Carr College of Art with the Helen Pitt Graduate Award.  

She is interested in the distance we feel from the otherness of the beauty of nature and the way in which something in our human nature prevents us from being at one with the beauty of the natural world. 


Since 2019 Shwart has participated in 3 two-person shows exploring the collaborative process. With the long landscape paintings, Shwart incorporates the lessons about trust and risk gained from those experiences. These paintings integrate possibilities and anxieties while exploring our senses, state of mind, and personal associations.


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cv_tshwart_april__2023.pdf
 Trish Shwart CV 


  • Portfolio
    • 2023 This Particular Place in the World
    • After and then After
    • 2023 Landscapes are a Marker of Time
    • Stolen Moments
    • Landscape Paintings
    • 2015 The Sleep Factory
    • 2015 Tell Me A Story - A Diorama
    • 2012 Life Diagrams
    • 2002 In Pursuit of Success
    • EXHIBITIONS
    • Statement & Bio