Manumission Painting

Born in 1977 on Earth, raised by monkeys till the age of four before coming to London to become a shaman's apprentice, Chris Swain is a painter currently living and breathing in Yorkshire. My work normally starts with a reference to an intense experience, thought or emotion, distilled through my memory over time and revealed as a singular image. Each painting is my attempt to capture the essence and energy of an experience or feeling I have had, mimicking my memory's process of recording an essence of the experience by collecting all the sensory information and condensing this into a singularity, a preserved moment, so the experience can be revisited in the future. These balls of sensory memory are what I try to paint. Each painting starts with a different inspiration and often leads to very different styles of work, depending on how I believe best to transfer the internal experience of the memory that has been crystallized in my mind, onto canvas. This process can mix abstract forms and figurative ones, chance and automatism or an element of performance. More than anything, I am most inspired by colours, energy, memory and nature. Music is also an integral inspiration in the creation of my work, the layers and composition of elements, and it is a constant companion when working and embeds itself in the work I am making.