About Me

Chad Looking Back on Chad (2011)

I am internationally recognised artists whose work is held in numerous private and public collections in Australia and abroad.

Now that the generic sales jargon is out of the way, a few details about myself. I am an Australian artist whose artistic journey has been influenced by education in psychology and sociology, upbringing in Australia, African heritage and four years living in Japan and China. I take great inspiration from rock art. I find it amazing to look at a 20,000-year-old rock painting and feel a connection across the millennia. As I look at the art, I imagine Palaeolithic humanity holding up their hand to the cave wall, and spitting out pigment to make a silhouette. In this moment, they were reflecting upon their own existence. When others placed their own hands over the silhouette, they were connecting themselves to someone not physically present. This was not art created to be different. It was not created to find an audience and it was not created to be a recognisable trademark to improve sales probability at auctions. It was simply an act of individual expression that built a sense of community across time and place. I feel gratification in being part of that connection and I want to work in ways that allows my art to offer similar connections. This requires an engagement with culture so that I take form and contribute to the thoughts of those around me.

As well as identifying with the artistic motivations of Palaeolithic humanity, I identify with the communicative processes of the shaman. I imagine them as the ancient poets who animated the world with symbols and feelings. This animation helped themselves and others process the world in a way that eventually gave rise to the great achievements of humanity today, and I do believe we have achieved a lot. When I create, I likewise enter into what could be called a trance or a waking dream. It is spiritual in a sense that spirituality is an engagement with the unknown and that which is not immediately defined, but there is a purpose there. Within this state, all that I’ve experienced is animated in ways that give rise to a feeling of resolution. I then awake, reflect and either seek a new mystery or dream again.

Bonehead; Self Portrait of an Artist (2007)

In regards to my life story, I was born in Canberra as a child of the 1970s. In keeping with the culture of the time, my parents enrolled me in an alternative education pre-school in which all ages were mixed into one and which operated on a philosophy of complete freedom from restriction and compulsion. It was an early education that influenced me for life. Whereas most young kids went to school where they learnt how to sit up straight, I spent my early school years drawing pictures, collecting frogs and wandering the neighbourhood during school hours. I never learnt an early fear of "out of bounds" and that lack of fear has resulted in me travelling the world and responding in art.

At the age of seven, my parents put me and my brother in a backpack and took us travelling through Europe and Africa for a year. Here, I experienced the history, the nature, the cultures and geography that most kids study from books at high school or university. Upon returning to Australia, I was enrolled in a state school and spent years learning how to be normal in an environment that I found abnormal. I had the spelling ability of a preschooler but the drawing ability and general knowledge of a high schooler. I was both inferior and superior to other kids, which bred a kind of confidence in being different.

Despite being confident in being different, I grew up feeling like I should try to fit a mould, which has in turn shaped my approach to art. Whereas many artists try to unleash their creative energy, I try to restrain and channel it. It has been quite a struggle. As much as I would like to be able to create in a singular style to find the refinement and recognition that goes with it, I am always experimenting and changing. It is like a fight against myself.

When I left high school, I enrolled in a Mining Engineering Degree. I didn't have a love of maths; I just lacked a clear vision of what I wanted to be so I chose a course that would be give me money and power. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was unable to complete the course. During lectures, I would draw pictures and when I would return home, I'd write poetry. I was just too curious in life to settle with something so defined as engineering.

Feeling that I needed a degree that had a balance between the desire to be creative and the logical need for employment at the end, I enrolled in an Arts Commerce degree. The Commerce went the way of Engineering as I was consumed by the ideas of the Arts.  

Sometimes I look upon my creative energy as a curse. I feel life would have been so much easier if I could have been a contented engineer driving a sports car to his holiday house. While the security of high income employment would be nice, a love of art and a need to balance it with the economic realities of life has taken me to dodgy group houses where I’ve been exposed to seedy side of life, as well as Japan and China where I’ve seen worlds from completely unique viewpoints. The art that has come out of that has brought me more satisfaction than any sports car or large house possibly could. Ultimately, life is about living and art is the gateway to it.

Why I sign my name upside down

I am often asked why I sign my name upside down. It is not because I want to make a point of being different. The answer is that turning my name upside-down helped abstract it at a time when I was uncomfortable with signing my work. Specifically, when I started painting, I was reluctant to sign my name because most of my paintings were rubbish and not the type of things that I wanted to define me. In regards to the occasional good pieces that I produced, I felt that my signing would make me egocentric. One day I met a lady who saw my works and wanted to buy some, but she said she wouldn’t buy unless I signed them. I still had a psychological opposition to signing but I wanted the sale. Spontaneously, I signed my name upside down. In this way, my name was somewhat abstracted and in its abstracted form, I felt much more comfortable about its place on the canvas. As well as helping me overcome my fears about egocentrism, the abstracted Chad felt part of the painting, not a label added at the end. In this way, I felt more intertwined with the painting.

Whether by habit or by a continuity of feeling, the method of signing stayed. I no longer worry that my art is rubbish. Likewise, I do not feel it is egocentric to sign a canvas or that I will desecrate it by doing so. Nevertheless, to sign the right way up feels wrong to me.

I am not sure why I signed my name Chad instead of Chad Swanson. It wasn’t because I was copying Vincent van Gogh. I had been signing my name for years before I found out that Vincent signed with only his first name as well. Perhaps it was because Chad means War, and was therefore a good descriptor of my early work, which heavily focussed on themes of conflict and confrontation. Alternatively, perhaps Chad is an original enough name that I didn’t have to worry about using my second name to distinguish myself from other Chads making art. I just don’t know because logic was not involved. All aspects of art have their mysteries to their creators and exactly why I sign my name the way I do is just one of them.

Self-portrait (2000)