Hot Coffee with Jane Swavely
I met Jane Swavely over six years ago at the historical A.I.R.gallery in DUMBO. I was just starting out as a curator and writer in New York and Jane invited me to see her ongoing exhibition at the gallery and talk about her art. We stayed in touch since. The other day I ran into Jane on the Bowery, she was holding an exquisite bouquet of white roses and was excited for her show opening the next day at Magenta Plains.The exhibition presents Swavely’s recent paintings and her intense infatuation with the color field.I wanted to get more in-depth questions from Swavely.
Nina: Imagine you are in your favorite coffee or tea spot. Where is it? What are you drinking? What are the three things you see right now?
Jane: My favorite spot for enjoying my Earl Grey tea (with milk and one lump of sugar) is at my drawing table in my studio on the Bowery. I am looking across the Bowery to the Liz Christy Community Garden and the exquisite Red Dawn redwood tree. It is a beloved icon in this neighborhood. Since it is deciduous it is like a giant piece of lace on this February day. I am watching the traffic speed by on this very busy corner and the sun shining on the wooden water tower atop a building on Second Avenue.
Installation photo,Jane Swavely Paintings,January 11-February 24,2024.Magenta Plains,New York. Photo courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Nina: Please tell me more about your ongoing exhibition that just opened at Magenta Plains in Chinatown. How did it come about? Does this body of work include more recent paintings?
Jane: Chris Dorland reached out for a studio visit in the spring, hung two paintings in the gallery for the summer, and offered me an exhibition that is currently up through Feb 24. The work is all recent, dating from late 2022 through 2023. I will be included in a two-person booth at the Independent Art Fair along with the work of the late painter Alan Uglow.
Jane Swavely,Light Trap #2,2023. Oil on canvas,73x61 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Nina: Could you pick one work currently on view and zero in on it. What is it called? What inflenced you when you were working on it? How does it fit the overall direction of your artistic practice?
Jane: I've chosen Light Trap #2 oil on canvas, 2023 73x61"
I started this series after seeing the Dan Flavin exhibition at Zwirner uptown last winter. the show was a recreation of his 1967 show at Kornblee Gallery. It included all sorts of wonderful ephemera. In these paintings I am interested in creating a certain light that comes from behind the canvas.
Installation photo,Jane Swavely Paintings,January 11-February 24,2024.Magenta Plains,New York. Photo courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Nina: Color is of great importance to you. Does it have personal symbolism? Do you believe that color indeed affects the state of our psychological being?
Jane: I am not wholly conscious of choices made while I am making this work so the color is instinctual, and the painting dictates next steps. Color definitely affects our psychological being. Viewers have had various reactions toward the palette of this show. Some are finding it contemplative and uplifting and some are finding it disquieting and foreboding.
Nina: Building up abstract fields is prominent for your practice. Is this something that connects you to earlier practitioners of this abstract direction in the XX century such as Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and others?
Jane:My training is classic figuration and has evolved into abstraction over the years. I do look at the abstract expressionist women and men, but I am also drawn to the minimalism of Barnett Newman, Brice Marden, the work of Dan Flavin, James Turell, the New Image painters Lois Lane and Susan Rothenberg, and the light of Bay area painters David Park and Richard Diebenkorn. My paintings are reductive but not minimalist.
Installation photo,Jane Swavely Paintings,January 11-February 24,2024.Magenta Plains,New York. Photo courtesy of the artist and the gallery.
Nina:You have been living in the Lower East Side for many years. In what ways did it change? How did these changes affect artistic life - galleries, studio spaces, art supply stores in the area?
Jane:I have lived on the Bowery since October 1980 when I was a student at SVA. First at 2 Spring street ( its now a tattoo parlor) and at Houston and Bowery since January 1984! The Bowery was quiet and desolate, really off the beaten path. Rents were affordable for the most part and the spaces were occupied by artists, musicians, and poets.
There was a live chicken slaughter house on my block until the early 2000's! The sky was big, the buildings were low. That is gone now. There was never traffic except during the San Gennaro feast in September. The weekends and nights after the restaurant supply shops would close were extremely quiet. The nights were very dark except for the lights of the lofts where people were living and working. Everything has changed and the neighborhood is extremely busy at all hours. Filled with tourists and NYU students. There are wonderful gallery spaces up and down the Bowery and the neighborhoods adjacent to the Bowery. There are still many artists who have managed to hold on to our lofts and for that I and so grateful. It feels like family.