Squeak Carnwath (b. 1947) explores philosophical questions about time, consciousness and what it means to be alive through paintings and prints that combine fields of color with handwritten words, lists, numbers, symbols and images of everyday objects. Moving between the profound and the mundane, she uses ordinary experiences—breathing, sleeping, eating, loving and remembering—as entry points into larger questions about human existence. Carnwath earned her M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1977. She taught at the University of California, Davis, for 15 years before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1998, where she is now professor emerita. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and was the subject of the 2009 retrospective Squeak Carnwath: Painting Is No Ordinary Object at the Oakland Museum of California. She received the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's SECA Award in 1980, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994 and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. In 2019, she was inducted into the National Academy of Design. Carnwath lives and works in Oakland, California.