Ena Swansea

Ena Swansea (born 1966) is an artist based in New York City.

Swansea was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and attended film school at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Swansea currently lives and works in New York. She is represented by Friedman Benda Gallery in New York, Lock Gallery in Philadelphia, Hans Meyer in Düsseldorf, 313 in Seoul, and Arndt Berlin. She works primarily in oil paint on a graphite foundation, often painting brightly colored figures on a dark iridescent background. Swansea draws heavily from her southern roots, including the story of her ancestor Southern Baptist preacher Thomas Dixon. "No one as yet has really pointed out that my paintings, whether they are of New York City or something else, carry a piece of the most disturbed part of United States history in them, as is my genetic burden, one might say."

Most recently, Swansea has exhibited work in How six men got on in the world at Fresh Eggs Gallery in Berlin, and Ena Swansea: untitled nightlife at Friedman Benda. Swansea’s recent exhibition, Psycho, at the Deichtorhallen / Sammlung Falckenberg, was a selection of over 40 of Swansea’s paintings from 2002–2012, chosen from various European collections. The exhibition was hung concurrently with paintings by Finnish artist Robert Lucander. Critic Belinda Grace Gardner says of Swansea's work, "Her compositions have the evasiveness of dreams or afterimages that briefly manifest themselves on the edges of perception."

In 2009, the Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (MUDAM), Luxembourg held a survey of 5 years of Swansea’s paintings (October 11, 2008 – February 2, 2009). Arndt & Partner Gallery Zurich showed "recent paintings,” October 23 – November 22, 2008.

Swansea's work has been in group exhibitions such as Greater New York, MoMAPS1, New York, Goetz meets Falckenberg, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg (both 2005), The Triumph of Painting part 3, Saatchi Gallery in London (2006), “Central Station” at La Maison Rouge in Paris, Back to the Figure - Contemporary Painting, Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf (2006), Symbolism, Von der Heyt Museum, Wuppertal (catalog ) True Romance - Allegories of Love from the Renaissance to the Present, Kunsthalle Wien (2007/2008) as well as in “Story-Tellers” at Kunsthalle Hamburg.

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