Corrie Chiswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1963. Her family is originally from the Western Isles but she spent most of her early years in the Scottish Borders and Central Highlands. She studied art at Fettes College where she was taught by the Scottish painter John Brown RSA and won ‘The Andrew Campbell Memorial prize for Art’. She accepted a place at Exeter College, Oxford in 1982 and graduated with a Batchelor of Fine Art, specializing in painting, from The Ruskin School of Drawing. She left Oxford in 1985 and travelled extensively, living and working from her studios in Australia and America until 1995, when she returned to the United Kingdom. She moved to Wales in 1996 and now works from her studio in Cardiff.