Ena Swansea

Ena Swansea is a famous American visual artist. She works primarily in oil paint on a graphite foundation, often painting brightly colored figures on a dark iridescent background. Swansea draws heavily from her southern roots, including the story of her ancestor Southern Baptist preacher Thomas Dixon.

She was born and raised in Charlotte in North Carolina. Swansea obtained a major in film at the University of South Florida. In 2008, her first museum survey was held at the Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg. Swansea’s first solo show at Locks Gallery was in 2002 and she has been included in group exhibitions The Tipping Point, New Light, and Water is Best.

Working primarily in oils on a graphite ground, Swansea allows her material choices to imbue her subject matter with a sensation of the uncanny. Using the world around her as source material, the scenes she depicts demonstrate her sensitive observation of light and distinctly cinematic perspective. Her subjects are simultaneously eternal in their presence and ephemeral in their representation; the metallic ground transforms the pieces as they catch the light in different ways. In 2010, Swansea conceived and created a memorable art installation in the floor of the ancient Roman arena of Arles—a sand painting measuring 150 x 300 feet. She was the first American artist selected to create a “Goyesque” for the arena.

The artist’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Galerie Neue Meister/Albertinum Dresden, and Deichtorhallen, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg. She is the recipient of a Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Swansea currently lives and works in New York.