Geraldine Swayne
I am a painter and experimental musician. My paintings aren’t deliberately sensationalist, but my work has a filmic atmosphere and dreamlike quality, with uneasy undertones.
I work largely from photographs rather than life, choosing images that give me a metaphysical charge, and which are drawn both from my circle of friends and anonymous sources. The bodies and faces of my paintings possess an interior psychological narrative, which I try to amplify with painterly effects that speak to the unconsious rather than to intellect, for example, they can seem restrained, rather than dramatically active, but hopefully this serves to heighten evidence of a vivid, if sometimes unusual, interior psyche.
I paint with enamels and glass paint because of the luminous quality of the colour and because of their viscosity, which suits my speed of application. The often diminutive size of my paintings invites a close physical relationship between subject and viewer, which creates a private and slightly transgressive feeling, like looking through a keyhole. This close proximity also reflects the private psychology I am investigating in my sitters.
Geraldine Swayne is Sussex-based painter, who has recently exhibited at, for example, the Fine Art Society. UK, Royal Academy London, Aeroplastics Brussels, and Turps Gallery, London. She studied Fine Art at Newcastle University UK, (1985-89), but her practice also includes the use of moving image and music. She has worked as a special effects programmer, made numerous experimental films, (including the 1999 Super8-to-Imax film ‘East End’ with Nick Cave) and for ten years was a member of the artist-initiated ‘Krautrock’ band Faust. She has also a mentor at Turps Art School since 2018.