Sarah K. Swann

Paintings

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On Edge, Acrylic painting on stretched canvas 8x10 inches Students on a ledge during a mass shooting at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic in which 14 people were killed on 12/23/2023
Students on a ledge during a mass shooting at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic in which 14 people were killed on 12/23/2023
From Our Home to Yours Acrylic painting on stretched canvas 8 x 10 inches 2023
Aftermath of bombing at Maghazi refugee camp, Gaza, 12/25/2023
Reforesting Hopper Street by Sarah Swann, 2022
Neon Sunset, by Sarah Swann Acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 inches 2025
For sale at Mohawk Valley Center for the Arts, $450 Revenge Bedtime Procrastination 12 x 12 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann Have you been doomscrolling late at night and dreaming of quitting your job in the city to start a hobby farm and chicken sanctuary? Good for you.
We Had No Idea What Was Coming 12 x 12 inches, Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2024 Our bonfire in Skyway, WA on New Year's Eve at the end of 2019. There were many times in the months and years afterwards that I would look back on this night wistfully, thinking of how we stood shoulder to shoulder, how we hugged each other without a second thought. The memories I have from that night feel like the definite end of a chapter of "life as we knew it." During the course of a lifetime, there must be many moments like this for each of us, but those that affect the entire globe so suddenly and wholly are fewer and farther between, and in my opinion, bear memorializing.
Weird Kid 24×30 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 Self-portrait of me as child, creating a white elephant costume, from a photo taken by my mother in the ’90s. I love the effect that flash photography gives to an image; a tiny, dramatic spotlight on our most mundane, bizarre, and human moments.
‘This is Fine,’ COVID Edition 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 A healthcare worker takes a little coffee break during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a nurse who worked before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, I often use painting as a way to explore the feelings I experienced during my time in healthcare: daily ranging anywhere on a spectrum from frustration, helplessness, exhaustion, and resignation; to hilarity, love, respect, and dedication. This painting is just a small representation of the global event that continues to affect us all, the crushing weight it put on the existing cracks in the U.S. healthcare system, and the workers holding it all together.
Girl With A Pearl Earring, Kolkata Metro 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on reused canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 A woman leans forward on the Kolkata Metro while the train is stopped, craning to see if she can determine the cause of the delay. An excerpt from Tagore’s writing on the wall visible through the window behind her, reads “my words that are slight/may lightly dance upon time’s waves/while my works heavy with import sink.” I spent most of a year living and volunteering in Kolkata as a nurse and rode the Kolkata Metro nearly every day from Jatin Das Park to Girish Park or Belgachia, depending on where my duties took me.
We Are On Native Land 30 x 40 inches Acrylic on reused canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 Reflections on the Mohawk River, Teionontatatie, in Utica, NY, the ancestral lands of the Kanienʼkehá:ka’ (Mohawk) and Oneida people. In honor of the Hodinöhsö:ni’ people, past and present, in whose ancestral home we live.
Derealization 24 x 36 inches Acrylic on reused canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 While I was remaking this painting I was thinking a lot about place and displacement, the act of establishing roots, which naturally follows the act of uprooting; exploring how these changes in our environment affect our sense of self, and what happens where we land. What makes us feel like we belong somewhere? Sometimes it feels like we’re barely making a ripple, like a stone skipping across a river, and sometimes it feels like the water is eroding us, slowly carving away the boundaries between the “self” and everything else around us.
Missed 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Swann 2022
Drowning Slowly 11 x 14 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 Sold Painted in the summer of 2022, during a period of change and transition. I felt like I was barely holding my head above water, but drowning so slowly that hardly any one else would notice. This painting is about being present in that feeling and holding space for growth to happen, manifesting the blooming of fungi and lavender and echinacea, stopping time to feed the bees, building a harmonious existence with the world around me.
Gilbert the Merpug 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 Commissioned work A pug transforms into a beautiful mermaid, sunning himself on a rock, while the ocean’s waves spray behind him.
Censored 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 NFS
Ladakh 24 x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2021 A young Tibetan monk holds a book, looking out over the city of Leh, Ladakh. In this painting, I drew from my memories and photographs from travels to the Leh Palace and Thiksey Gompa in Ladakh as well as temples in Bodhgaya, Bihar and Yuksom, Sikkim.
Cat King 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on reused canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 Sold A very fancy cat poses proudly with a spilled waterglass, surrounded by cascading garlands of catnip, with the mounted head of a mouse on the wall behind him. To reduce waste and conserve materials, I frequently reuse canvases when I don’t like the first thing I’ve painted. Cat King was painted over a very badly painted cat that I first painted when I was in grade school. You can see the original and the transformation on my Instagram, @_sms_art_
We’re Bringing Our Dead To Your Door Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 Sold In October of 1992 the AIDS epidemic had been going on for about 10 years. 40 million people had been infected. Research into treatments had basically stalled. There was no cure in sight. More and more people were getting sick and dying, and those they left behind felt abandoned and ignored by the government. On October 2, 1992, about 150 people, many of them members of ACT UP, met in D.C., carrying their beloved persons’ ashes in a variety of different kinds of vessels. They chanted: “We’re bringing our dead to your door. We won’t take it anymore.” Mounted police on horses attempted to barricade the protesters from reaching the White House, but they pushed their way through. When they reached the fence, one by one they began to hurl the ashes of their loved ones onto the White House lawn, in an act of “enraged grief.” 30 years after the Ashes Action, lack of access to equitable and humane healthcare is still a major problem that plagues our healthcare system and hurts people every day…but to move forward we have to be able to turn our grief into action. The full story can be found on Radiolab: http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/ashes-lawn/
"Ok, Mom," acrylic painting by Sarah Marris-Swann. A pregnant woman watches the news in a darkened room as a wildfire burns in San Francisco behind the Golden Gate Bridge, her mother approaches from the doorway. A pregnant woman watches the news in a darkened room as a wildfire burns in San Francisco behind the Golden Gate Bridge, her mother approaches from the doorway. Like many people of my generation, my experience of the present is always colored by wondering what our future will look like in a world ravaged by climate change and economic inequality.
Birds on Old St. Francis 11 x 14 Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 Sold Birds settled on the ridgeline of the roof of a towering and crumbling old abandoned Catholic church in Utica, NY.
Sondering 16x20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2021 A girl sits at a laptop computer in a room high above the city, with a dramatic view of skyscrapers and old stone buildings through the window behind her.
Bristol Road 20 x24 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 Commissioned work Painting of a white house on a bright green lawn. The sky is darkening with a rainbow bursting through the storm clouds, and bright sunshine falls on the house. Close wooded hills frame the house on either side. in the foreground is a stone bench next to a boulder under a small tree and other plantings.
The Last Time I Saw Him 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Swann 2022 While working as a nurse in Seattle, I had a community with the people who were my coworkers, colleagues, patients, and very rarely, their families. I spent most of my waking hours with them, and they loomed large in my thoughts. This painting is the image I have in my memory of the last time I saw the son of one of my patients, the day before he died of a heroin overdose. You can listen to an excerpt of a song I wrote about this mother and son pair here.
Fading Memory 11 x 14 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Swann 2022 This painting captures a memory of loss and loneliness, at a time when even the act of putting on socks felt like too much work.
Seneca Street 16 x 20 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2021 Sold A palette knife street scene painting, standing at the door to the Butterfield Post Office on a snowy Seneca Street in Utica, NY, looking towards the Adirondack Bank Building and Grace Church.
There Will Never Be Another Summer Like This 30 x 40 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2021 Washington Square Park on June 29, 2021. COVID restrictions had been lifted just 2 weeks prior following the first round of vaccinations, and New Yorkers reunited en masse in public parks to revel in the summertime and be together again for the first time in over a year. Meanwhile on the west coast, "unprecedented" wildfires raged, burning thousands of acres, an ominous reminder that the green summers of our childhood might someday never come again, and that while hot and smoky as this summer might be, we may never again experience another summer like this. There was a electrical, tenuous feeling of exaltation in the air, a feeling of reprieve and immense relief, overlaid with an impending sense of doom, like being in the eye of a hurricane. You can listen the song I wrote by the same title here.
Bank Place, mixed media work created 2022-2024. 11 x 14 inches embroidered acrylic painting on canvas. Depicts a winter street scene outside the former Savings Bank of Utica building on Genesee Street and Bank Place by artist Sarah Marris-Swann.
Peonies 8 x 10 inches Acrylic on gesso board Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 A study of bright fuchsia peonies blooming in a Ball mason jar on the kitchen counter.
Night Terror 8 x 10 inches Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2024 Gifted In May 2022, a small stone rabbit appeared briefly astride one of the columns of the gold-domed bank building in Utica, NY, and then, just as mysteriously, disappeared again.
Burnt House 9 x 12 inches Acrylic on reused canvas board Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 An imagining of the fire that burnt 1231 Steuben Street in Utica, NY.
The Vine House 9 x 12 inches Acrylic on reused canvas board Sarah Marris-Swann 2023 Giclee Fine Art Prints available on Etsy, $16 The Vine House in Utica, NY, is well-known and loved by admirers for the cascading vines that engulf the beautiful old home on State Street in a secret garden of viridescence.