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| John August Swanson |
John August Swanson Born in Los Angeles to a Mexican mother and Swedish father, John August Swanson is arguably one of the premier serigraph and lithographic print-makers alive today. His art reflects his strong heritage of storytelling, addressing his human values, cultural roots, and the quest for self-discovery through visual images. His parables, color and humor optimistically embrace life and one’s spiritual transformation. His unique style is detailed, complex, and elaborate. It is influenced by the imagery of medieval miniatures, Russian iconography, the color of Latin American folk art; and the tradition of Mexican muralists. As an artist, printer and serigrapher, Swanson has overseen all phases of the production of his original silkscreen prints. His hand-crafted serigraphs are printed in up to 89 colors of transparent and opaque inks, which overlap to create rich and detailed imagery. For each color printed, the artist draws a stencil on Mylar film. Each stencil is subsequently transferred to a silkscreen, which is used to painstakingly print one color onto the serigraph edition at a time. After many printings, the resulting serigraph is a matrix of richly overlaid colors, visually striking and technically masterful. Swanson’s art is represented in the permanent collections of many museums, including: The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museums of American History, American Art, and Air and Space; his works are in the print collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard University’s Fogg Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris and in the Vatican Museums’ Collection of Modern Religious Art. johnaugustswanson.com |
