Coralie Swaney creates colourful, happy paintings and endearing sculpted characters in her Smiling Seagull Studio where quite often, quirky ideas pop into her head. She quickly commits them to canvas or clay before her sensible side intervenes. Regardless of the medium, Coralie’s work bears the imprint of humanity, most especially its idiosyncrasies. Infused with nostalgia, humour, popular culture, irony and allegory, the viewer is invited into the narrative and encouraged to add to the story. Coralie often refers to her work as contemporary not-so-still-life, realistic but not necessarily adhering to reality. It is almost always smile-inducing.