ABOUT

Melinda Schawel is a North American/Australian artist living & working in Melbourne (Naarm), Australia. She received a BFA from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1993 and a Postgraduate Degree in printmaking from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1995; her thirty-year practice spans a diverse range of media, including paper, metal, wood, and clay. Driven by a deep reverence for materials and process, she pushes the boundaries of her chosen medium and her own physical ability, with each piece emerging from these labor-intensive rituals with a sense of fluidity that belies their manual origins.

Inspired by the rhythms and textures in nature - from the ebb and flow of tides to the interplay of light and shadow or the movement of wind across surfaces, she is drawn to what feels both fleeting and eternal. While her works are never directly representational, they evoke organic forms and patterns, inviting viewers to contemplate the invisible forces shaping our world and offering a space for reflection in an ever-changing landscape.

As arts writer Elli Walsh describes: ‘With scalpel in hand, Schawel methodically tears the surface of heavy gauge paper, piece by piece, until a form emerges, taking its own organic path beyond the artist’s control. A lyricism inhabits this act of peeling layers and shedding surface; a dance between control and unpredictability..an engraving tool is utilised to drill into sections of the paper, which by contrast is more controlled and symmetrical, choreographing depth by casting shadows. Some painted forms recede in the pictorial space as others approach the surface, threatening to drift off the paper and dissipate into the atmosphere. These optical manoeuvres of energetic shapes and textures create the sense that the works are in flux, forever evolving.’

Schawel has exhibited widely in her adopted country of Australia with over 20 solos under her belt and internationally in Hong Kong, Switzerland and Singapore. She has been a finalist in a multitude of art prizes including most recently, the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize 2024, the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing 2024 and the WAMA Environmental Art Prize 2023. She has completed numerous art residencies from La Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miro in Spain to the Art Vault in regional Victoria to the Franz Masereel Centre in Belgium. She was recently featured in Arts Hub, has been interviewed by the late ABC TV presenter Jill Singer as well as comedian/activist Mandy Nolan, and featured in various publications such as Artist Profile Magazine and the Canberra Times. Represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Hill Smith Art Advisory in Adelaide, and in a host of private/public collections, she has been commissioned for many residential projects here and abroad, including her first integrated public artwork for the City of Casey, Victoria in 2020 and a project with Mori Building Co. for Azabudai Hills in Tokyo, Japan 2023.