Laurel Swenson

As both an abstract painter and a counselling therapist, Laurel works with the emotional landscape. She abstracts both the tangle of our emotional storms and our calm inner seas rendered in paint, colour, pencil and charcoal marks, and texture. Laurel’s paintings are most known for their rich textures, expressive marks, and use of colour. She is particularly interested in the themes of transition, struggle and growth, and is inspired by human development, psychology, and her experience working in her role as a Registered Clinical Counsellor in private practice.

Laurel is a queer-identified, Vancouver-based abstract painter working, for the past ten years, out of a big, old warehouse building chock-full of artists known as the Parker Street Studios. She attended SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts and Emily Carr, City U for a Master of Counselling degree, and has a history as an internationally shown video artist who received Canada Council for the Arts grants for multiple projects. Laurel is now focused on working as a painter while on running a busy private practice as a Registered Clinical Counsellor. Laurel's paintings celebrate the value of struggle in our very human lives as well as the power of creativity to improve mental health and wellness.