Christine Swann creates visual narratives through her luminous portraits
As a child, Christine Swann knew she would grow up and become an artist.
“That’s all I ever wanted to do,” she says. “And I knew when I was little that one day I was going to paint people. I remember always thinking, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but someday I will.’”
Now an award-winning pastelist and oil painter, Swann has far eclipsed that youthful conviction. She’s become known for her light-filled narrative portraits of every age and gender, from pieces that explore emotions or one of the hundreds of commissions she’s created during her more than 30-year career.
Formerly a graphic designer and illustrator, Swann returned to painting when her three children were small. They were her first subjects—motivated to pose in exchange for candy—before she branched out to portrait commissions. “I never went back to graphic work,” she says.
While she has painted portraits of CEOs and corporate donors, she most enjoys “getting to paint little kids when they start to have personalities,” she says, such as the sisters in heirloom dresses whose oil portraits she created for a local family.
Swann visits her clients’ homes—when proximity allows—to take her own photos, spend time with her subjects, and “understand what they like and don’t like and bring that into the paintings.”
Each portrait ultimately becomes “a visual narrative,” she adds. “I really like the story behind the person and try to visually tell a little bit about that story.”
That could be by illuminating the kind eyes of a fur-capped gentleman, showing a woman’s lost love through her downcast gaze, or conveying a little boy’s dislike of playing the family piano through his mischievous smirk.
Vessels Inspiration
The Pittsburgh native moved to Greenville in 2022, found a studio at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, and earned a spot as a Dwight Skinner Fellow in the Metropolitan Arts Council’s 2023 Open Studios (an honor given to first-time participants). In the three years since, she has become one of Greenville’s go-to commission artists while simultaneously working on pieces for exhibitions and galleries.
An in-progress series depicts people with chandeliers and light fixtures in the background, an exploration of “how people find the light in their lives and stay in it,” says Swann, who has joined Thornback Gallery’s roster of artists.
That work follows Vessels, a series depicting how people heal from emotional traumas. Inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with gold, Swann cut up each of 12 wood-panel oil portraits with a saber saw and reassembled them with 24k gold leaf.
Whether a commission or a personal piece, each striking portrait requires time carefully crafting compositions, determining color harmonies, and considering how she’ll infuse light into the work.
“[Light is] a big part of what I teach and a big part of what’s important to me,” says Swann, who leads national and international workshops and is writing a book about pastels—her favorite medium because it is similar to oil paints but also allows her to draw and quickly layer.
“You have to really understand the physics of light and how it acts,” she adds. “It helps a lot with the form. The human head is one of the most complex things you can paint because everything is so subtle. And the light will tell you what’s happening with those forms.”
Those self-taught skills have garnered acceptance in numerous juried national and international exhibitions, dozens of awards, and recognition as an Eminent Pastelist from the International Association of Pastel Societies. Swann also has Signature status—a juried designation—with the Pastel Society of America.
While the accolades are rewarding, it’s in creating memory-invoking heirlooms that Swann finds joy. “I’ve had people say, ‘I still love this painting over the fireplace,’ because it’s from when their children were small,” she says. “It becomes something special that’s passed down.”
Getting to Greenville
When Swann decided to move away from the Pittsburgh area—ready for change after a series of major life events—she made a list of 12 things she wanted in her new locale.
On the wish list was a place with a warmer climate, close proximity to hiking, a drivable distance to mountains and beaches, walkability, an artists’ community, and a smaller town than Pittsburgh that still had cultural amenities such as theaters.
“I just started Googling places,” she says. “And Greenville kept coming up and looked amazing. I had never visited here. I had no family here; I had no clients here. But I sold everything and moved with my son. It was the best thing I ever did.”
A Pivotal Painting
There was a time when Swann stopped painting and considered ending her art career. “It was too hard—the kids were little, my mom had cancer, and there were all these crazy things going on,” she says.
On a whim, she decided to paint her then 7-year-old son’s stoic post-bath expression and enter it in an International Association of Pastel Societies (IPAS) exhibition. With just two weeks to complete it ahead of the show’s deadline, she set up a light and easel in her bathroom.
“My son would come in, and I would bribe him with Hershey’s Kisses. I’d set a timer, he’d eat a Hershey’s Kiss, and he’d pose for me. I had a lot of photos, too, so I painted parts of it from those,” she says.
Entitled Cold, the portrait won an IPAS Gold Medal and “triggered a lot of my career,” she says. “I will never sell that one. One day it will be his.”
To see more of Swann’s artwork, visit her studio by appointment (Greenville Center for Creative Arts, 101 Abney St., no. 10, second floor), browse swannportraits.com, or follow @christine_swann.
