Deirdre Boeyen-Carmichael

Deirdre Boeyen-Carmichael

I am a visual artist and activist who has a particular focus on the environment and how people engage with it. I am curious about humankind’s devastating impact on planet Earth, our home. Through my art I hope to instigate social change that benefits humanity and the environment.

I like to participate in socially engaged projects to raise issues that we as a society need to address. I believe art has the power to shift consciousness. I try to make art that gently facilitates thought, starts a conversation and initiates change. Art can present new ideas in an engaging way and as the world is facing so many challenges right now, I am just playing my part to try and make the world a better place for us all. I hope that my art can help to raise awareness about the unprecedented environmental problems we are facing – climate change, mass extinctions of species, plastic pollution – we are in a climate emergency and I feel an urgency to convey that message in my art.

​Background

I worked as an art teacher, then graphic designer, and am now a full time artist, living and working on the traditional lands of the Wadawurrung, on the Surfcoast. I am currently studying a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) at Deakin University in Geelong and in 2016 travelled to Florence to study traditional oil painting techniques.

Last year I was a semi-finalist in the Lester Art Prize with my self-portrait Our Addiction to Convenience and was a finalist in the Blacktown City Art Prize with a still life painting of single use plastic items.

For the last three years I have been involved in various socially-engaged art projects which focus on the environment including Sunrise Postcards, The Plastic Catch Project, The Black Finch Project, Climate Badges and Frontlines.