Carol Wainio was born in Sarnia, Ontario, in 1955 to Finnish immigrants and grew up in Waterloo, Ontario. Since 1980, she has lived and worked in Montréal, Ottawa, and points between. She developed an early interest in visual art through her father and pursued studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax (1976) and the University of Toronto (1978–1979) before earning an MFA from Concordia University, Montréal, in 1985. There, she worked with Guido Molinari and undertook additional studies in the history of ideas, developing a painting practice that draws on interests in history, narrative, and broader visual culture—brought together in a discursive, visceral approach, where figures from past and present, high art and vernacular forms of expression, engage in shifting, layered grounds. Her work has been described as visually dense, conceptually full, and marked by a desire to use painting as a means to consider representation itself as well as real world issues.

Wainio’s work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario, and many other museums and public galleries across Canada. Her paintings are part of major Canadian museum collections and corporate and private collections. Wainio is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2014). She is currently represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto, and TrépanierBaer Gallery, Calgary.