ENA SWANSEA

SEA AND SNOW

August 9 - 26, 2019

Opening reception, Friday, August 9, 6 - 9 pm

Gaa Gallery Provincetown

Gaa Gallery Provincetown is delighted to present sea and snow, an exhibition of new works from painter Ena Swansea. sea and snow will be on view August 9 - August 26, with an opening reception with the artist on Friday, August 9, from 6-9pm, at 494 Commercial Street, Provincetown.

Ena Swansea (b. 1966, Charlotte, North Carolina) is a New York-based painter whose oil and graphite work is lush with movement, darkness and light. The paintings in sea and snow resist immediate narratives; they draw on the ethereal and expansive qualities of the natural world in their analyses of abstracted space and dimension. These works—rich with sophisticated color and voluminous atmosphere—illuminate the ways in which meditative painting asserts its curious powers.  

In sea and snow, the ocean rolls and collapses like an earth-sized blanket; snow collects in a tangle of branches, suggesting insulation and erasure. Swansea often returns to the subjects of land and water in her work, in continual pursuit of what the artist describes as “useful painterly accidents.” These works present the infinite command of nature as more than a source of rendered beauty: they serve as transcendent frames, backdrops of vast scope and constant change that showcase painting’s sensorial depth and imaginative capacities.

Swansea’s paintings have been exhibited widely: Recent solo exhibitions include Ben Brown Fine Art in London and Hong Kong; Albertz Benda Gallery in New York; Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, Germany; Locks Gallery in Philadelphia; and 313 Gallery in Seoul. In 2001, she received the Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Swansea’s work is included in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL; Galerie Neue Meister/Albertinum Dresden, Germany; and Deichtorhallen, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Germany.  

sea and snow is on view at Gaa Gallery Provincetown from August 9 - August 26, 2019.