Carroll Swenson-Roberts

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selected works

About the artist

In Temple of Small Wishes (Ro2 Art, 2017), Carroll staged memory as theater—wood-cut panels shaped like miniature sanctuaries, each framing a scene of domestic reverie. Patterns climb the borders like architectural friezes, drawing the viewer closer. Inside, siblings duck behind an armchair, everyday rituals unfold with quiet humor, and color blooms into soft pinks and blues that feel both sacred and familiar. These works aren’t ornate reliquaries so much as stages for the small dramas of a life richly lived—where home, play, and recollection are elevated into icons of memory. Born and raised in Dallas, Carroll earned her BFA in Painting from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. Medieval art and its symbolic storytelling have long been a touchstone, informing her distinctive use of shape, pattern, and figure. Her paintings and drawings extend the domestic into the mythic, where memory is less linear narrative than layered experience. Though her practice is rooted in Dallas—where she maintains both her family home and a studio in the Cedars—Carroll has always been in motion. California holds a special place in her life, first as a youthful escape from Texas and later as a setting of love and family, and today she shares her time between Dallas and a San Francisco home. Alongside frequent returns to West Texas, these rhythms of travel and return give her work its sense of memory in motion—deeply grounded yet always moving forward. Her exhibitions at Ro2 Art trace the evolution of this vision: Temple of Small Wishes (2017) introduced the sanctuaries of her childhood imagination; The Garden of Earthly Delights (2020) expanded that language into a wider symbolic theater; and At Home in This World (2024) revealed lush worlds where figures and woodland creatures shared a stage of pattern, rhythm, and quiet fantasy. Carroll will present her next solo exhibition at Ro2 Art in 2026.

Artist Statement

As a child the only thing I liked about church was the art. The art told stories in a direct but mysterious way. It interested me and I thought it was a wonderful way of communicating. The stories in artworks are not linear. The whole story is there to be seen in the order the viewer wishes to see it. The art I enjoy the most are the pieces that can change or reveal new and different readings when seen over time.

As an artist I start my drawings and paintings with figures or objects that are connected to what I have seen, or have lived, or have pondered. I choose the color and patterns of the space as a way to weave the story of those figures together. Sometimes I think of the figures and their surroundings like a play. The figures are the actors . The paint and the pencil, the pattern and the color make the set and provide a space for the story to be revealed.

solo exhibitions