Intervals Nº 4: Claire Oswalt

An interview series with creative professionals exploring music's role in the artistic process.

Intervals is an interview series exploring how music integrates with and informs the creative process. In each installment, I speak with artists across disciplines about the role sound plays in their work and lives.

In today’s conversation, we’re in dialogue with an inimitable force on oil and canvas—Texas-based painter, Claire Oswalt.

I met Claire Oswalt nearly a decade ago when I lived in Austin. We had many long group dinners at her home over the years, almost always involving her husband Spencer’s sourdough bread and good albums spinning on their turntable.

Throughout our friendship, I’ve always felt a kindred spirit in the way Claire thinks about creativity’s connection to the sensorial world, and the ways she considers herself in conversation with her work. Her approach to painting is expansive, with many of her pieces involving cutting, painting, and restitching the canvas back together to create stark lines, amorphous bodies, and contrasting angles within the frame. Her work feels at once organic, personal, and comforting … and strikingly otherworldly.

Her solo shows and varied group exhibitions have been installed worldwide over the past decade plus; featuring notable institutions such as Broadway Gallery, Overduin & Co., Rebecca Camacho & Lora Reynolds Gallery, among others.

1. What role does music play in the conceptual phase of any given project (either subconsciously or overtly)?
I can’t imagine life without music. I have the same connection to it that I do writing and in poetry. They all do the same thing. Words and their tonality; the sounds of words, have the same effect for me as music. They don’t really have to make sense. I don’t listen the lyrics of music that much. I just put it on and let it flow.

2. Has music ever informed certain creative choices you make in your process—or changed the way you thought about a project?
I believe it has—subconsciously. I don’t set out to listen to a specific song or band or genre. When I’m thinking about my work, music is on in the background, and undoubtedly is influencing me, but the ways it shows up is usually a surprise.

The bookends of the front and end of a song are really important to me. I think about my borders a lot on my paintings… reaching the beginning and the end. There’s this Roxy Music song called “End Of The Line,” that starts with a harmonica and then just goes off into a totally other direction. That kind of wild tangent will make me start thinking in ways that inform the way I work.

3. What are your listening habits in your day-to-day life, both within the work, and in general?
We listen to music as a family quite a bit, but in my studio it’s on ALL the time.

I get into a real jazz mood in the winter. I was just listening to Bill Evans’ Undercurrent this morning.

I tend to listen to instrumental music and classical toward the end of the day when I’m getting a little weary and I need to focus. Wordless music kind of helps me get serious. I have a classical, strings-based playlist that I add to and have on repeat (see #10 below).

4. What are a few of the most influential artists (or albums) in recent memory that have provided deep inspiration for your work?
Cameron Winter — Heavy Metal. I find that album comes from a really fresh point of view. I don’t love all aspects of it but I find him so very interesting as an artist.

5. Are there any parallels in your work that relate to music — materials, elements or patterns in your work that could be interpreted as somehow musical?
You and I have talked talked about Murakami before. He’s one of my favorite authors. He says, “Writing without rhythm is just nothing.” I agree with him. A painting that has no rhythm is atonal in some sense; it just isn’t interesting. I need a musical rhythm to keep me going and engaged when I’m working on a piece.

I know things are clicking when I’m physically moving to a song. If I’m dancing, I’m doing something right. That’s a sign I can trust.

6. What is your favorite movie soundtrack or original film score?
Philip Glass’ score for Mishima. It’s so dramatic in the best way. I will put that on and it will loop without me even realizing it, and will just keep it going and going. I also really love Marriage Story from Randy Newman.

7. Is there a song or artist from your youth that you feel encapsulates the emotion of that time in your life?
Keep It Like A Secret from Built To Spill is one that reminds me of a very special friendship when I was younger. In my high school years, Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes got me through a lot. My favorite album of all time is Astral Weeks by Van Morrison.

8. What track is currently stuck in your head or constantly being played on repeat in recent days/weeks?
Jessie Murph - “Heroin.” She’s a 21 year-old from Alabama that fuses rap and country. She’s had a tough life, and writes candidly about it. It’s raunchy and fucking raw. She’s like a southern Amy Winehouse, a little bit. I love seeing the fearlessness of it. Her voice is beautiful, but she does this thing where she hits a note and instead of slightly backing off of the mic, she pushes into it even harder. It gets really intense. I appreciate her leaning into something and exaggerating a point just to sort of see what happens.

9. What was the last truly amazing musical performance you saw live in concert?
Bill Callahan at The Sagebrush in Austin, Texas.

10. Please share a playlist that you keep returning to time and time again.
Here is my String Theoreez playlist (via Spotify).

---

Intervals Nº4 Playlist: Spotify, Tidal

Oswalt’s next works will be exhibited at Art Basel Miami this December, followed by Fog Fair in January in San Francisco. Her next large-scale solo show will be with the Broadway Gallery in NYC in September 2026. Claire lives and makes her work in Austin, Texas. For more info, visit claireoswalt.com.

---

More discussions from the INTERVALS series:

---

---