Chad profile

Influences

Australia

China

Japan

Profile

Self Portrait

My art has always been difficult to categorise. Personally, I'd define it as Psychological Symbolism. I create and integrate various pictorial representations in order to ask psychological questions.

Although I define my work as "Psychological Symbolism" , the mainstream art world defines it as "Outsider Art." Outsider art is created by people who work independently of institutionalised art cultures. As a general rule, Outsider Art tends to be quite random, sometimes naïve, and unconventional. Furthermore, it is usually disconnected from the issues being considered by other artists and the art market.

For me, it is ironic that I am defined as an outsider artist when I am less of an outsider than most artists. I do not receive the government funding that allows some artists to live a cocooned existence, and curators to put on exhibitions alien to the demands of the market. To the contrary, I spend most of my time around people who are not artists. In some ways, I think I am more like a renaissance artist as I do not consider it necessary to disconnect the art world from the engineering world, or the world in general. For me, art is part of mainstream society, not a distinct category of it. On the other hand, artists who are only influenced by artists tend to explore meaningless or unimportant topics.

As my art is is shaped from influences originating in the non-art world, it shows the fingerprints of the cultures of where I've lived. In Japan, my art was influenced by Japanese femineity and politeness. In China, it was influenced by the clash of modern and traditional cultures, as well as some diverse attitudes to morality. In Australia, it was influenced by the conflict between the government funded art world and mainstream Australian society.

Chad Swanson

Self Portrait of an Artist

STYLES	Outsider art Pyschological symbolism
INFLUENCES	Cultural war in Australia Repressed sexuality in China Appreciation and beauty of Japan
SUBJECT MATTERS	Social identity Cognitive dissonance Moral confrontation The question that isn’t asked
MEDIUMS	Oil, Acrylic
WEBSITE	www.artofchad.com
EDUCATION	2004 University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Master of Professional Communication 1995 -1997 Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Bachelor of Arts - Majors in psychology and sociology 2001 Australian National University, Canberra, ACT Painting & drawing: a visual voice
LECTURES	2006 Beijing Language and Language Culture University, Beijing, China The Artist’s Mind – an artist’s inquisition into the motivation to create (Chad Swanson’s art in a western context.)
COLLECTIONS	Australian Story, a painting dealing with the morally diverse nature of Australia 's urban foundations, and challenging art viewers to compare that moral diversity to their own, was donated to the Museum of Sydney, NSW. It was then handed off to the Hyde Park Barracks, held for two years and returned. Life immitates art.
EXHIBITIONS	2006 The Freudian Eye, private showing of paintings at Beijing Language and Culture University dealing with sexual psychology. 2005 Australian Story exhibited in Hyde Park barracks as part of an exhibition into Aboriginal attitudes to European colonization. 2003 Hikkomori, a one-night showing of drawings exploring the reservations and beauty of Japanese people. 100 yen Izakaya ( Osaka) 2001 Journey, a group exhibition at the Spiral Arm Gallery ( Canberra) exploring the travels of the artist.

n Email: stompie2000@hotmail.com