Whoops. A whole ‘nother year just went by. I know it looks like I haven’t been painting, but I have, I swear. It’s just that it’s way easier to update Instagram and this website was half-broken until now. Also, I’m still a circus artist.  Continue reading…

Dear me, it has been over a year since I last posted, hasn’t it! Well, I guess that’s to be expected since I was working abroad 5 months out of this past year, and trapeze is still my first and foremost focus. Pop over to www.swiftcircus.com to see what I’ve been up to.

That said, 2017 was not entirely without painting. I have been focusing on small works and have done quite a few pieces as gifts, which has been very satisfying.  Continue reading →

When I began this piece, it was about loneliness and liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”)—about feeling alone and neither here nor there—hence my choice of a door, which is literally a threshold, and the brooding head of a raven.  Continue reading →

I am the raven queen, this foul head a heavy thing. Everyday I wait for a sign of the one with wings as black as mine.  Continue reading →

I am that red, roiling thing.

Je suis la femme-fénix, tordue, épouvantée. Effrayante en sa splendeur, ses ailes enflammées, exténuées. Je n’ose pas, alors je m’envole…nulle part. Les murs m’entourent, il n’y a que des murs. Partout, partout, des murs sans portes, des portes sans toi. Toi, tu pars. Moi, je reste. C’est toujours comme ça. Ces ailes ne volent pas.  Continue reading →

Well, a great deal of things have happened, but alas, not that much art, at least in traditional mediums. I have been thoroughly absorbed in my pursuits as a trapeze artist, but you might start seeing more oil paintings from me as someone has most generously allowed me to take over a spare room as my painting studio. It’s small, but way better (and healthier) than trying to do an oil painting in my bedroom, which is what I did for this little still life here (which I completed last fall):  Continue reading →

Hmm. I thought I wrote an update some time ago in the fall, but I guess imagined it. Anyway, what the hell have I been doing since last summer? Well, basically I now work as a trapeze artist. Here is my website. I decided to fully commit to this career last year, when I came back from Paris. I had always been a bit on the fence about it and wasted a lot of time pondering the possibility. Then I finally realized that if I didn’t give it a shot, I would regret it for the rest of my life. One of the things that helped me reach this decision, silly as it may seem, was this comic.  Continue reading →

Wow, so it has been a busy few months. I got back from Paris mid-June (can’t wait to go back) and spent the month of July as a studio assistant to Patrick Earl Hammie. This was a challenging but incredibly instructive experience that I would recommend to any artist at any level. Art is so highly personal, and every individual has a different way of working, so it can be both frustrating and difficult to come out of one’s artistic shell, to break away from one’s creative habits.  Continue reading →

So, it has come to my attention that the About and Contact sections of my website are not working at the moment; I’m not sure what’s up with that, but I’ll try to get it fixed soon. In the meantime, my contact info can be found here:

camille [dot] swift [at] gmail [dot] com

Twitter

Also, I might as well take the opportunity to explain why this blog is so quiet right now: I’ve been working in Paris since February! I am doing a digital painting at the moment, but 95% of my free time is spent in trapeze training. I went to a great art event last night, though, and was inspired to do this sketch:  Continue reading →