Carol Schweigert is a Boston-based painter who explores terrain both inside and out. A former resident of the Piano Factory on Tremont Street, she now has a studio in Charlestown and paints “plein air” all over Boston, from the Arboretum to the Zakim Bridge.
“My passion is painting from direct observation in both oil and gouache, indoors and out, sometimes in the rain, occasionally in the ice. I like the vitality and physicality of plein air painting. It hints of extreme sport, with police encounters, slippery slopes, lightning storms, and chats with skinny-dippers,” she says.
Schweigert returned to oil painting from the world of child rearing. “The abstract expressionism of my earlier education seemed so last century,” she says. “So I leapt back even further taking a wooden French easel and heading out into the fresh air.” She is intrigued by visual contradictions, carrying a 19th-century art kit into the 21st century, wondering what it is that makes a piece “of the moment.”
She received a BFA from Syracuse University, and has shown her paintings locally in a number of locations, including the Danforth Museum’s Off the Wallexhibit; the Hunnewell Visitor Center at Arnold Arboretum; and the St. Botolph Club. She takes continuing education classes at Mass College of Art, where she enjoys participating in a vibrant arts community.
A price list of her work is available inside the library, ranging from $250 to $1,200. The artist will donate ten percent of any art work sold from the Tremont Street window to the South End library staff for programming and supplies.