Patrick Swift was an Irish painter who worked in Dublin, London and the Algarve, Portugal.
24 Facts About Patrick Swift
1.
2.
Patrick Swift was plainly not interested in the formalist aspects of Modernism.
3.
Patrick Swift wanted art to have an expressive, emotive, even psychological content, though not in any literary sense.
4.
Patrick Swift had three distinct "periods": Dublin, London, and Algarve.
5.
Patrick Swift worked in a variety of media including oils, watercolour, ink, charcoal, lithography and ceramics.
6.
Patrick Swift regarded painting as "a deeply personal and private activity".
7.
Patrick Swift was educated at Synge Street CBS, a Christian Brothers School in Dublin.
8.
Patrick Swift liked such old French masters as the 17th century's Nicolas Poussin, the 19th century's Eugene Delacroix, such moderns as Switzerland's Alberto Giacometti and Britain's Francis Bacon.
9.
Patrick Swift formed part of the group of artists and writers who were involved with Envoy.
10.
Patrick Swift was accompanied by his future wife, Oonagh Ryan.
11.
Patrick Swift then returned to London in 1956 and accepted Elizabeth Smart's offer to share Winstone Cottage, which contained a studio, in Oakridge, Gloucestershire.
12.
Patrick Swift was familiar with London and its literary and artistic circles by the early 1950s.
13.
Patrick Swift's travels led him to the small fishing village of Carvoeiro in the Algarve.
14.
Patrick Swift was so enchanted with the place that he remained.
15.
Patrick Swift designed the building that houses Porches Pottery, along with several other buildings.
16.
Patrick Swift exhibited: drawings for Algarve: a portrait and a guide at the Diario de Noticias Gallery, Lisbon ; an exhibition of Porches Pottery at the Galeria Diario de Noticias, Lisbon ; an exhibition of his paintings at Galeria S Mamede, Lisbon.
17.
Patrick Swift designed the sets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Portuguese National Theatre Company, Lisbon.
18.
Patrick Swift lived and worked in the Algarve from 1962 until his premature death, from an inoperable brain tumour, in 1983.
19.
Patrick Swift is buried in the Igreja Matriz church in Porches, for which he designed the stations of the cross.
20.
Patrick Swift's criticism is that of the practicing artist not that of a practicing critic, and when speaking of his criticism I do not merely mean only his occasional critical essays, but his activity as co-editor of a magazine and as champion of Bacon, Freud, Auerbach, Craigie Aitchison, Nano Reid, Giacometti and David Bomberg.
21.
Patrick Swift was an artist in the broad sense before he was specifically a painter, and his context embraces literature and other disciplines besides painting or drawing.
22.
Patrick Swift is not a painter's painter, he is an artist's artist, a man whose mentality overlapped into other fields besides his own chosen one.
23.
In 1993 Gandon Editions published a biography of Patrick Swift to coincide with the IMMA Retrospective.
24.
In 2004 Patrick Swift's work appeared on the BBC Antiques Roadshow.