Meet Zoe Schweiger—a Miami-based painter whose work explores figurative distortions of loved ones within warm, saturated environments, reflecting Miami’s evolving relationship with sea level rise and climate change.
She earned her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2022.
Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including Above The Limestone at NSU Art Museum, Under Warm Water at Spinello Projects, The Armory Show with Spinello Projects, In Spiritual Light at Mindy Solomon Gallery, and NADA Miami with YoungArts.
A recipient of the Innovate Grant and Miami Individual Artists (MIA) Grant, her work is in the NSU Art Museum’s permanent collection. She is currently preparing a new body of work for Expo Chicago with Mindy Solomon Gallery in April.
Though she initially pursued sculpture—drawn to its physicality and structural demands—Zoe never fully connected with the medium. Painting always pulled her back, and over time, she developed a practice that merges the depth and tactility of sculpture with the fluidity of paint.
Her process is both additive and subtractive. She builds her compositions through delicate, watery layers, then wipes sections away with a paper towel, carving out light and form. The untouched spaces become the highest points, while the deepest layers recede, creating a sense of relief similar to carving. This technique gives her paintings an inherent depth—some areas containing many translucent layers—mirroring the shifting, distorted quality of water.
Schweiger’s subjects, often close friends and family. She works from her own photographs, sometimes posed, often candid, capturing moments that feel both intimate and expansive. In one instance, she had her friend, fellow artist, and studio neighbor Susan Kim Alvarez pose in Biscayne Bay, fully clothed, to achieve the perfect reference. These choices emphasize the physicality of her process—one that is meticulous yet intuitive, labor-intensive yet effortless in its final form.
Her paintings balance serenity and complexity, their simplicity masking the intensive layering and subtraction beneath the surface. This tension—between process and result, control and surrender—gives her work a quiet but powerful depth. Like the ocean, her paintings draw viewers in, their stillness holding a sense of movement just beneath the surface.
