"paintings and drawings" by Richard Swayze

"paintings and drawings"

By Richard Swayze

Showing at Nevada City Winery Gallery: Wednesday, September 17th through Monday, November 17th

About the Show

The paintings in Richard Swayze’s current exhibit, “paintings and drawings” speak mountain language fluently.  It is a silent language coming from study, personal experience, love, and respect. 

Swayze has hiked, climbed, and traversed many of these mountains, or in some cases longs to; regardless, he paints them skillfully with absolute wonder and vision. Something humble and simple comes across in these works.

He understands and utilizes the personal, intimate, unspoken experience between the artist, the subject, and the viewer.

Swayze’s mountain paintings might be compared to a painter who falls in love with their model and thus renders their subject’s figure perfectly, because the artist knows their body and soul intimately.   

When one takes time viewing his snowcapped or stark, creviced peaks, one can almost feel the whoosh of cold wind at the summit’s top.

Each peak, point, or gully is defined by Swayze’s masterly illumination of the changing reflections of light and shadow, as contrasts of textures and color meet an intense cobalt blue open sky or a white-gray, brewing tempest sky. Then you notice a speck of ocher or a flicker of red, unexpected accents. 

Swayze’s drawings are a study in precision. He is able to make edges of a wall meld with stone and sky, drafting lines, or a cow with grass hanging from its mouth, all have an architectural and time-worn feel. Each drawing has a kind of layered haziness; even so, there are refined details as well as natural earthiness. His horizontal and vertical lines direct the eye and mind to focal points. Old postal stamps, chalk, and ink markings broaden the scene or place, inviting speculation. 

In both his paintings and drawings, Swayze speaks of observation and stillness, while celebrating exhilaration, oddities, and artifacts, offering us the opportunity to ponder our imprints and smallness against the earth’s grandeur.

Artist Statement

Artist Richard Swayze talks about his show “paintings and drawings” at the Nevada City Winery Gallery.

Painting and drawing. A chance to spend a few hours each day working out small problems and listening to music. Lakes, rivers, buildings, and people would be just as rewarding to illustrate; however, the alpine environment holds images that I want to reproduce. Crags, snow, and shadows remind me of places I’ve been and places I wish I had experienced - humbling how few destinations have been achieved.

I choose to represent what is there for me. If I want to see a couloir, I try to paint it. Abstract work from mid-century moves me as a viewer - Agnes Martin, Franz Kline. I work in a small studio. Listening to music makes the art-making experience whole. I’ll try almost anything, even opera. And I hit ruts. Too much Bob Dylan or Keith Jarrett. George Strait or Aaron Copland. Painting outside with an easel does not appeal to me (now). Though I have left paintings out in

the rain by mistake. To qualify my own work, I read and try to understand art history, but I don’t try to find a historical niche to land in.

About the Artist

Artist Richard Swayze lives in the foothills on a small plot of land with ponderosa pines, oaks, cedars, and doug firs. He paints in oils - mostly alpine landscapes. He drives a truck with a missing tailgate and a Mt. Hutt sticker on his rear windshield.

Swayze studied at the Instituto Allende, the Academia de Belle Arti di Firenze, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Sierra College. He first came to the Sierra Foothills after receiving an Artist in Residence Grant from Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.

This is Swayze’s third solo show at the Nevada City Winery Gallery. He also participated this spring in a group exhibit, “Timeless Inspirations: Poetic Persian Music - Reflections in Art”.