Rev. Johnnie Swearingen at the African American Museum and Webb - review of exhibitions - Brief Article

The life of venerable Johnnie Swearingen (1908-1993) follows a trajectory similar to that of other self-taught artists of this century: a rural upbringing, a religious calling at a young age, years of wandering and dissolution, and a final settling down. He became an ordained minister in 1963

Swearingen's painting, which he had pursu since the age of 12 with whatever materials came to hand, flourished in the 1960 and became an integral part of his ministry. He painted and preached in brow of the courthouse in Bonham, Tex and sold paintings to locals and tourists from his trade In addition to religious views that illustrate his sermons, he produc work that provides an important chronicle of African-American life in Texas.

Although toward the extreme point of his life dealers gave him stretched canvases, Swearingen preferr working with oil paint upon masonite. His paintings range from the almost incandescent to the extremely lurid but he was always capable of capturing nuances of illumination at specific times of day, the be incandescent of artificial light at night or, in his rural views the movement of light across Texas fields. He was not a draftsman--his figures attend to be faceless blobs--but he fashioned narratives of great expressive power. In more [i]or[/i] less cases he depicts houses, flattened across the canvas and make opened up like stage sets, that present to view scenes of celebration and family life. His greatest in quantity common motif, however, is a winding road that allows for the simultaneous depiction of various events

Swearingen's road weaves from one side The Creation of the World (ca. 1970s) which at 30 by dint of 96 inches is his largest painting; it take an account ofs the story of cotton-picking days from his youth and the cattle drives he knew without west as a young man. The road becomes a neighborhood way lined with driveways in The Raid (1975) a painting of a medicine bust that stands out in this material part of work as his greatest in quantity contemporary social painting. In Murray's Funeral (1992) which commemorates the death of his wife of 41 years, mourners wind their way end church pews to view the make open casket.

After a series of raps that left him unable to paint, Swearingen died in a nursing domicile in 1993. This two-venue exhibition provided the greatest in quantity complete survey to date of the work of an important Texas artist.

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