Swanson was born in Christchurch in 1981. She graduated from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts with a BFA (Sculpture) in 2003. After losing her studio and most of her early art production in the Christchurch earthquakes she lived in Auckland briefly before arriving in Dunedin in 2013 to take up her tenure as the University of Otago’s Frances Hodgkins Fellow. By 2020 she was based in Christchurch again, living with artist partner James Oram and working part-time at the University of Canterbury.