Suzan Swale: Dance Me To The End Of Time

About

“My raison d’etre is my art and predominately my love of painting and to be able to survive as a female painter. As the late Harvey Daniels said in my Catalogue of Fear in 1998 “Suzan Swale has always been an artist.” This was for an early retrospective exhibition, and he recognised my passion for painting.

Painting enables me to escape and yet embrace the world in which we live; to explore the otherness of experience. I can live ‘between’ politics, wars, everyday events… ‘What does it mean’?  This is important to me. What do my paintings say to the spectator?

I can communicate with my use of colour and the energy of my brushstrokes and with my composition and how the figures are placed in a kind of non-space in a no man’s land.

As an art student I once said I wanted my paintings to be disturbing but beautiful. I cannot judge whether I have succeeded in that. The next painting is always going to be the best one. I will never give up as long as I still have something to say.”

Suzan Swale, May 2021

About Suzan Swale

Suzan Swale graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in painting in 1972. Painting is the focus in Swale’s work, although she has made installations, neon artworks and uses photography and print and was part of a successful performance group for eight years. As a student she won awards including The John Minton Scholarship and The Royal Institution Award. She has taught at numerous art institutions including Central Saint Martin’s. Her work is in public and private collections, notably she has works in the Grabowski Collection in The Sztuki Museum, Lodz, Poland.

Important exhibitions include Swinging London Museum Sztuki, Poland 2007, Pop Art in Europe Museum Het Valkhof, Netherlands, 2012-13, Tell me no more lies Cello Factory, London 2015 and Selected Works Felix & Spear, London 2019.

Suzan Swale lives and works in the London Borough of Camden. She has been a member of The London Group since 1984.