About the Artist
Biography from Stephen B. O'Brien Jr. Fine Arts, LLC:
The competition that artist John Swan seeks out doesn’t require
a panel of judges. Although he has won prestigious prizes such as
the Ducks Unlimited International Artist of the Year award in 1987
and the Atlantic Salmon Federation Artist of the Year three times,
Swan has entered his work in few judged exhibitions. He prefers
contests on streams or sea as an avid fly fisherman. He then paints
his experience with the passion of a true sportsman. One of America’s
prominent sporting and wildlife artists, Swan is equally adept in
watercolor and oils. His paintings bring to life fishing and hunting
trips to places as far afield as the bonefishing mecca of The Bahamas
and Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula, also a favorite sporting haunt of
renowned impressionist Frank W. Benson (1862-1951). “I paint wherever
I can fish,” he admits. The result is spectacularly immediate works
set in the world’s premier sporting destinations. Based on firsthand
experience, and often created en plein air, Swan’s paintings are
imbued with freshness: the energy of a tarpon struggling against
the line or the quietude of a hunter’s early dawn preparations.
Even while singularly expressive, his style is reminiscent of some
of America’s most beloved past masters. In the tradition of Benson,
John Whorf and Winslow Homer, each of whom painted sporting scenes
between the 1880s and 1940s, Swan’s close observations of nature
are executed with fluid brushwork and a palette of highly contrasting
lights and darks. Like Homer, he employs a full spectrum of blues
representing reflected and refracted light on horizontal planes.
Although much of his work is made on location, Swan is often at
work in his hometown of Portland, Maine. His home and barn-studio
are tucked away in a section of the city that he describes as a
“colonial village at the edge of the sea.” Situated on a tidal river
dense with lily pads or ice chunks each season, his shingled home
was once owned by impressionist Walter Griffin (1861-1935). He bought
the property in 1995 and filled it with Griffin’s work. Amazingly,
Swan’s own ancestors lived in the house over two hundred years ago.
After studying art at the University of New Hampshire, Swan began
his career painting his two sons and rural Down East landscapes.
About twenty years ago, one of his fly fishing scenes landed on
the cover of Gray’s Sporting Journal, catapulting him to national
recognition as a sporting artist. Since then, Swan’s work has appeared
regularly in publications such as Esquire Sportsman and Wildlife
Art. He has also illustrated numerous books including Joseph Bate’s
classic Atlantic Salmon Fishing and Thomas McGuane’s anthology Live
Water.
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