ABOUT


My work begins with an action—a tear, a drilled hole, a mark—and unfolds as a conversation between process, material, and surface. Initially trained in printmaking, I work predominately with paper but also with clay, wood and metal, often pushing the boundaries of each medium beyond its traditional use. Heavy, hot-press paper can be fragile but also robust. Clay remembers touch. Wood can mimic metal; metal can mirror the delicacy of paper.

There’s a quiet equilibrium that I am chasing - a kind of stillness that holds tension, like holding two opposing forces at once, the moment when something feels like it could either fall apart or hold together. My work is physically demanding, but it’s also a way of listening to the medium, to place, to the small and invisible forces that shape the world and us along with it.

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.’