Timeline

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. Her evocative, atmospheric portraits, city scenes, and rural studies have long been associated with the cinema of dream. In her work, Swansea stills moving water, renders night skies by using light, and conjures the narrative complexities of culture and humanity—all of it a demonstrated, contemporary commitment to the history and traditions of painting. Swansea’s paintings have been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, MA, USA; Ben Brown Fine Art in London and Hong Kong; Albertz Benda Gallery, New York, NY, USA; Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, Germany; Locks Gallery in Philadephia, PA, USA; 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.