Weekly beauty: John August Swanson

I really like John August Swanson's artwork. There are several pieces on campus at Luther Seminary, and WorkingPreacher.org uses it in their backgrounds. The sort-of rolling shapes remind me of Grant Wood's trees, and the bright colors add a lot of vitality to the story each piece tells.

Here's a selection of biblically-themed pieces (we will conveniently ignore the circus-themed ones because circuses creep me out a little--sorry).


"Psalm 85" (artist's notes)




"Story of the Prodigal Son" (artist's notes)




"Take Away the Stone" based on the raising of Lazarus (artist's notes)




"Washing of the Feet" (artist's notes)




A note of coincidence...I wrote and saved this post yesterday, and today I saw the following announcement on the Luther Seminary intranet. So if you're in the area and want to see more of John August Swanson's work, here's your chance.

A reception honoring John August Swanson will be held in the Westminster Gallery, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, on Friday, Oct. 8 from 5 pm to 8 pm, with an artist's talk from 6 pm to 7 pm. The exhibition features early and current work, and significantly, works-in-progress that demonstrate technique.

The exhibition opened Sunday, September 12 and runs through Sunday, November 21, 2010. Westminster member and Luther Seminary archivist, Paul Daniels, and his archival assistant, Kari Bostrom are co-curators with Westminster on this joint venture. Luther Seminary holds the archive of John's work and papers and is sharing these holdings with the Westminster Gallery.