Tyler Swain at work in his studio

TYLER SWAIN paints and lives in northern Utah, blending realism and abstraction in his artistic practice to offer commentary on our movement through time. His paintings nod to art history with their traditional rendering of subject matter, while seamlessly weaving more contemporary elements of abstraction into the compositions, ultimately offering the viewer visual space to rest and contemplate nature on a deeper level. Swain earned his BFA in drawing and painting from Utah State University, and his Associate’s degree from Snow College. He is a former member of the International Guild of Realism, and has exhibited his work across the United States and Japan. In 2015, Swain was named one of Southwest Art Magazine’s “21 Under 31: Young Artists to Watch”. 

Over the winter, we sat down with Tyler for a conversation on his artistic practice: his influences, his studio rhythms, and what he hopes to accomplish with his painting. Read on for excerpts from that conversation.

BLUE RAVEN GALLERY

As an entry point into our conversation, could you distill how you think about your creative practice into a few sentences? 

TYLER SWAIN

Probably the easiest way to describe it is I try to balance order and chaos. It's a dance for me between carefully rendering things, subjects, in a traditional crafts way, and then balancing that with more intuitive painting, and more pure abstraction. So: the spontaneity of the abstraction, the careful rendering of the traditional, and the push and pull of those two, when I can kind of balance those two.

BRG

What initially caught your attention about painting as a medium, and what continues to hold your attention around painting? 

TS

I had a college professor named Ron Richmond. I was able to tour his studio one day, and he just had these massive, unbelievably beautiful oil paintings all over. Seeing his oil paintings, just the richness of color and how tactile oil painting is . . . It doesn't need to be behind glass. It's very approachable. That's what captivated me with oil painting to begin with. And then the more I do it, I just realized how diverse it is. There are so many different approaches and different kind of looks you can get with oil painting. It just keeps surprising me, even after all these years. Sometimes I'll make little happy accidents, or explore it in a way I haven't yet. There are so many secrets to be unlocked with oil painting. 

BRG

Was that one of the first times that you'd really encountered oil paintings in the flesh, in that really tangible, immediate sense? 

TS

No, I had been to art museums and had seen oil paintings already. I had been to Italy as a teenager and seen a lot of really famous paintings in person. Michelangelo's work, Caravaggio's, things like that. So that love of oil paintings was already there, but it just needed a more pivotal nudge when I was ready. When I was in college I was artistically mature enough to be captivated by it even more. 

BRG

That makes a lot of sense. These things often show up time and time again before there's that one moment where it hits you in a very different way.

TS

Maybe a good way to look at it is I was ready to accept it as something that I wanted to make, not just something that I wanted to observe and enjoy at a distance.

Tyler Swain

Back Again

Oil on Canvas, 18" x 18"

BRG

I saw on your website the Leonardo da Vinci quote talking about how simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. I'm curious if you have other influences, or anti-influences, on your work currently. 

TS

Well, I always loved the Old Masters. The thing that drew me to that quote specifically is one of my favorite works from Leonardo da Vinci, The Vitruvian Man. Simple sketch. I mean, it's seemingly simple, but anatomically it’s incredible that he was able to perfectly draw the human form circumscribed in that circle and square. Sometimes when we look at great paintings—and this is not to disparage these kinds of paintings at all—but these great, masterful paintings with multi-figural narrative, landscape, figure, all this stuff going on at once . . . it's almost like visual overwhelm. Which is kind of the point, I think. It's to all-encompass you. But for me it's not very restful—I look at that I’m like, ‘Oh wow, that's amazing, I need to go take a nap now!’ It’s so much. I’m really drawn to the paintings that are quieter, where I can spend some time with them.

Another one of my all-time favorite artists is Albrecht Dürer, especially his watercolor work. There is one piece, Young Hare, that is just beautifully rendered in watercolor, and it's like—that's it. That's all that is needed to make this piece amazing. It’s just a simple object portrayed wonderfully, and there's nothing else needed. Or he did a watercolor called Great Piece of Turf—just like some grass and some dandelions. Super simple. There's no narrative. It's not a multi-figural, crazy, eight-foot painting or anything, but it just makes you spend time with it because it is so simple. 

BRG

I know that you're classically trained as a painter, and you worked a lot with still life earlier in your career. I see aspects of still life in the compositions that you're working on currently, in that way that you're isolating and framing the elements, and how intentional the compositions all feel. Are you thinking about still life while you're making these works, or are you more thinking of that sense of quiet, and of making something that you can sit with for a longer amount of time?

TS

That's an excellent question, and I don't even know if I know that much about myself to answer it definitively. I was a still life painter—I still am a still life painter, in fact I did a still life yesterday. I'm still doing them in my work constantly, but I've incorporated more wildlife and other elements too over the years. I think I always approach painting in a similar way: I approach these birds and wildlifes kind of how I would have approached a still life ten years ago. But rather than describe my wildlife as still life, I describe all of what I do as portraiture. It's probably an easier way to look at it, because—back to that isolating a subject and simplicity—I really feel like I'm painting a portrait of an object, or I'm painting a portrait of a bird. Even my trees and landscape paintings, they seem like they're portraits. Compositionally, I feel I'm really simplistic, and I like to just paint the thing and highlight the thing, rather than a huge grouping of a lot of stuff. 

BRG

I find that idea of portraits of objects very compelling. I'm looking at Held Safely, your portrait—and I’m even calling it portrait as I look at it—of the nest with the three eggs.

TS

When the great portrait painters were painting their portraits, they wanted to say something with the way they painted it that would highlight the personality of the subject, or the uniqueness of the subject. And I think that's another critical aspect of how I paint, and why it does feel like portraiture: because I'm highlighting the individuality or uniqueness of that specific subject like a portrait would do. 

BRG

Your work straddles realism and abstraction in a beautiful balance between the articulated figures—whether those are animal, plant, or other natural form—against abstracted backgrounds. How do you arrive at that balance? Earlier when you were telling me about your studio practice, you mentioned a balance of order and chaos, which seems like a lot to navigate. What does having both realism and abstraction do for the work differently than leaning fully into either tradition?

TS

This goes back to your previous question about influence in my work. I mentioned the Old Masters—that influences the traditional realism side, but I also have a huge interest in contemporary art and things that are unexpected. I think that's the beauty of contemporary art, how it forces you to look at things in sometimes bizarre, sometimes unexpected or surprising ways. I fell in love with purely abstract painting, which I never thought I would. When I started painting, it was very rigid: perfect drawing, getting your angles right, your values right. It was all very, very academic. Classical. And then I was introduced through art school and through living in the art world—or just the world as a whole—into this very free, intuitive world of abstract painting. So I started to be drawn to artists that had those dual elements. As much as I love abstraction, there's part of me that I don't think could ever be satisfied with painting just non-representational abstraction. Maybe in the future, I don't know. But where I’m at now, I feel like—while I love that part—I would be missing a piece of me if I didn't also continue this love of realism. It’s the two parts of me, and two different interests. I’m trying to put a foot in the traditional world, and a foot in the contemporary world, and make a compelling image that pays homage to both directions. It's kind of like moving backward and moving forward in time.

BRG

I love that about the movement through time. I think it creates an interesting tension, as well, when you're looking at the work. It does feel very contemporary—but I also see the roots, and I see the history there.

TS

Being an artist right now is the best time to be an artist, I feel, because we have everything at our disposal. Everything's been done in a way. Highly realism, highly narrative, craft. That's been taken to its fulfillment. Also, pure disillusionment from structure and representation has also been taken all the way to its conclusion, so there's this huge continuum that we have to work with as artists. The whole world is at our disposal. Where do we fit in this huge legacy of artwork that we can now consume and appreciate? So it really is paying homage to these all these different elements that I love of art history, and just combining them into one. We live at a time where it’s totally acceptable and celebrated to take and combine and make something fresh out of all of these previous ideas. 

BRG

I'd love to know what you're working on at the moment, if there's anything that you can share with us.

TS

Well, I just prepared a couple of canvases, and at least one or two of them are for the Blue Raven Gallery. I don't have anything drawn out on them yet. This is actually how I work: I prepare the canvas with texture, and I do a whole bunch of acrylic paint, and I drip, paint, and splash. I basically make an abstract painting before I even know what I'm going to do with it as far as the subject. Because I don't like to just start on a blank, boring, white canvas. It's not very inspiring to me.

BRG

In your studio, are you working in cycles?

TS

I'm a small batch painter. I’ll do four or five typically, where I’ll prep them at once, get them all started, get the abstraction begun, and then I’ll take those one by one to completion. And then I’ll start the process over with another small batch of four, five, six—something like that.

Tyler Swain

Looking Out to Sea

Oil on Canvas, 20" x 16"

BRG

Speaking of prepping your canvases, texture is so important in your work. I would love to just hear a little bit more on your relationship with texture in your paintings.

TS

Texture to me is the mark of uniqueness, because it's something that cannot really be translated in a reproduction or print. It's like that object has its personality because of its surface texture. It’s unreproducible. I like the idea of it being a very one-of-a-kind object, and texture is an excellent way to achieve that uniqueness. 

I also like the way the texture draws the viewer in. If the canvas is perfectly smooth and there's nothing surprising about the surface itself, then it's all about the image that is portrayed on the canvas. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But I like to go beyond that a little bit, and have it be about the image, but also about the actual surface texture as well. So a viewer will see my painting maybe at a distance, and they're captivated by the image perhaps. And then they come closer, and then they're rewarded with interest in the surface texture as it draws them in. So it catches their interest, and then holds their interest. 

BRG

I like thinking about texture almost as a fingerprint, like you were saying: it's the mark of the uniqueness of the canvas. I hadn't thought of it quite that way before, but even just brushwork as it's building up and building up really does have a personality. Maybe that’s not quite the right word, but it holds something of the character of the painting that is impossible to replicate.

TS

I think personality and character are both great synonyms for it, or even the soul. It's like the soul of the painting in a way. You can see a reproduction of a Monet, and then you see it in person, and it's like, ‘Oh, now I get it. Now I've interacted with the soul of this piece on such a more personal level.’ You’re only rewarded with that connection when you see the actual painting in person. No other way can have you connect quite on that spiritual level, I think.

BRG

Where do you think that comes from? The texture in its own inherent right, or as an echo of the artist's hand?

TS

I think you connect with the artist when you see the artist's hand. When you see—even, this is going back to when the surface is really smooth, there's not a lot of texture. But it's so rewarding. When you look at like a Caravaggio—really up close, like your nose is almost to it—and you see the brush marks and you're like, ‘Oh, now I have a connection to Caravaggio. I found his hand in this.’ And you connect on such a deeper level. You can even imagine how his hand must have looked as he put that stroke down. And so, yeah, it's an echo of the artist's hand. Absolutely. It's engaging the viewer, inviting them to be part of that creation process, to get an insight into the creative process that has happened. 

Tyler Swain

Held Safely

Oil on Canvas, 20" x 16"

BRG

I love that. An invitation into the creative process. 

Tyler, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I have just one final question to wrap us up: if you were to find yourself at a dinner party full of artists, both living and dead, who would you like to have seated near you? Is there anything that you’d want to say to them?

TS

I saw this question, and I thought this is such an interesting question for me, because my wife and I actually host an artist get-together, and we have artist dinners quite frequently. I don't think I could hope for or ask for anything more than that. It's crazy—it’s this relatively small area, and so many people in the valley and the surrounding towns have chosen art as a profession. It’s so fun, because I like to talk shop. I like to talk art, but even more than that, I like creative people, and I feel like I make friends quickly with artists just because we see the world so similarly. So it's not even like a hypothetical question. . . I'll give a shout-out to one of my best friends, Joe Alleman. He comes to these dinners a lot. We also are in a band together: I play drums and he plays guitar. So I guess I would pick a seat by my friend Joe, or any number of these local artist friends that I've made over the years here. 

TYLER SWAIN is a contemporary painter based in Northern Utah, represented by Blue Raven Gallery.

MORGANNE ELKINS is a painter and writer from Midcoast Maine. She serves as Blue Raven Gallery's editor and artist liaison.