Jan Swihart: A Place Apart

Frye Art Museum

photo by Jill Berarducci

Seattle, Washington

(206) 622-9250

Jan Swihart: A Place Apart

December 10, 1999 - February 6, 2000

Jon Swihart recently showed his work at Seattle's Davidson Gallery in a group exhibition of genre paintings, a category of representational art that is seeing an upsurge in recent years. This winter, Swihart will show works from the past two decades in a solo exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, Dec. 10 to Feb. 6. This will be his first exhibition at the Frye.

Genre refers to paintings of everyday life, distinct from still-life or landscape painting. The situations portrayed in Swihart's scenes are typical American scenarios, but with other clues suggesting events of greater meaning, such as a gathering of saints in a family living room or a mythical creature out for a walk. (left: Unitiled, 1991, oil on canvas, 23 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches, Private Collection)

A Southern Californian, Swihart graduated from California State University at Northridge. In 1988 he was awarded the Reader's Digest artist-in-residency grant to spend six months at the Claude Monet estate in Giverny. He has since returned to complete a series of landscapes. This series of postcard-sized images will also be on view in the exhibition at the Frye.

Read more in Resource Library Magazine about the Frye Art Museum.

rev. 11/22/10

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