“I guess I have a chattery brain,” says Squeak Carnwath, whose many interests animate both her work and her conversation. “I am influenced by everything I can get my eyes on.”
Indeed, as part of her creative process, the Oakland-based artist draws upon countless inputs, from pop culture and mythology to her own history. Carnwath likes to tape scraps of paper, newspaper clippings, and odds and ends to her studio walls while she paints, ephemera that fascinate her even if there’s no direct correlation with her works in progress.
This distinctive approach has become Carnwath’s signature. For decades, she has created resonant, layered, and idiosyncratic paintings. Her work frequently includes handwritten words and numbers, as well as recurrent symbols (rabbits, African goddesses, dog toys, and record albums, to name a few). The paintings often seem to be conveying a narrative—perhaps they are revealing a dream or an obsession or posing an existential question—but what the stories actually mean is open to interpretation. And that’s how she likes it.
