About The Artist

“Quietly creating contemplative contemporary landscapes.”

Born January 1962 in Guildford, Surrey, Graham Swain went to Portsmouth Art College to study painting after gaining an honours degree in Architecture.
His rich influences are many and varied; a priviledged education in Surrey, the third son of a senior Scotland Yard detective, marrying Emily, an actress from an acting family. His creative gifts were realised at an early age as treble soloist singing and recording in the major cathedrals of Holland, Belgium and Northern France, including Notre Dame Paris, Chartres, Rheims, Laon and the Palace of Fontainbleau.

Quality of line, purity, colour relationship and proportion and playing with perspective are the main considerations when creating his contemporary and thought-provoking landscapes.
'Pure creation and beauty is everything to me, where every mark matters.'

Also, the beauty of calligraphy often forms a structure to hang his constant and continual layering of marks and thoughts within and around landscape.

"Graham's response to landscape is contemplative. Like an elaborate game of chess, works evolve through time. Creation becomes a challenge as every mark is considered as the aesthetic process unravels towards sublime resolution. Graham's preoccupations are undoubtedly formal, but his technique relies on more than simply a conscious arrangement of shape and colour. Graham aims to intuitively distil the essence of his visual experience in a much more unlimited way. Landscape provides the ideal motif; unrestricted by figures or buildings, an exploration is permitted which ultimately pervades pure creation."

Sally-Ann Schilling, MA History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Former Art Historian and Lecturer, Tate Modern, London.

Art Group / Exhibitions

Selected Exhibitions:

The Fittleworth Gallery, West Sussex. March 2022
The Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, The Mall Galleries, London
The Royal Institute of Painters in Oil, The Mall Galleries, London
The Bashimi Art House Gallery, Salzburg, Austria

Private collections in the UK and abroad