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Fiberglass Plant Smokestacks III, Joseph T. Swanson |
Art All Over Richmond.
When visiting exhibits at the Richmond Museum of Art (RAM), an art lover can easily make a day of it, by exploring additional fine art and contemporary art exhibition galleries in the city. The RAM is just south of US 40 near downtown on the west side of the East Fork Whitewater River.
Venues on the northside near the I-70 interchange include the MacDowell Gallery at Reid Health and the Tom Thomas Gallery in Whitewater Hall at I.U. East. The campuses of both Reid Health and I.U. East are adjacent.
The RAM currently hosts a major solo exhibition by Mason Archie of Indianapolis, as well as works by artist and educator, Elmira Kempton, a native of Richmond who studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and was later head of the Art Department at Earlham College. There is also a special small exhibition of preparatory works by famed book illustrator, Garth Williams, who did the drawings for the beloved children's book Charlotte's Web.
The Thomas Gallery has a solo show, The Unpaved Road, by India Cruse Griffin, a Richmond artist, which will be covered in detail elsewhere in this blog. She currently has this solo show at I. U. East, as well as works at Reid Health and RAM, and is showing a body of work at Harrison Center in Indianapolis.
Reid Health's MacDowell Gallery currently has the exhibit Oil and Water by Joseph “Joe” T. Swanson. The gallery hangs along two long exhibition walls on the second floor above the main entrance. The space runs along a major hallway at the front of the facility, and is bathed in natural light from the front facing windows.
Joseph T. Swanson's Oil and Water at MacDowell Gallery.
The title of the Swanson's show could have multiple connotations. The phrase refers to elements that don't necessarily blend well together or agree. Also, though, both substances are fluid and flowing, so the title could refer to that attribute of semisolid gracefulness that liquids possess. Both indeed are associated with art mediums, as in oil and watercolor paint. Finally, oil has an environmentally negative connotation perhaps, whereas water invokes more uplifting and positive thoughts.
The oil of Richmond's light industrial and the water of its downtown river seem to serve as the painting grounds for the artist as he seeks inspiration from the reality of his local environment with its ancient natural beauty and the relative toxicity of industrialization.
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Tie Plates on the Former GR&I, Joseph T. Swanson |
Swanson presents works from two, if not more, separate threads of creative impulse, maybe. Upon first look you might think two or more, if not multiple artists, are involved. The largest, surest group of pieces are the abstract and gestural works that many times note either a landscape origin, or object of landscape reference. The show statement that accompanies the exhibit describes a 'found object' discovery process in the artist's gestural painting. It's not clear from the description whether Swanson starts with a landscape, or ends up there. His found object could be the painting itself, when the back and forth is finished.
The artist has a background in graffiti-inspired murals and the use of spray paint as a medium. This experience seems to inform his mark making and his color choices. Many of his paintings show the fluid and curving marks, and somewhat simple or reduced color palette, seen in monikers and tags on rolling freight-cars on railways. His paintings are devoid of any such obvious reference, though. Swanson has dissolved any link to such logos by splintering his marks and painting his strokes in a more haphazard and abstract manner.
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Prehistoric Cataract 6, Joseph T. Swanson |
In Prehistoric Cataract 8, (and 6) the colors are limited to a handful of bold earth tones; blues, greens and browns. The physics and form of a cataract or waterfall is not easily seen in the work – it is an overall abstract image. But the tumult and chaos of the water can be imagined in looking at the churn of the brush strokes radiating about the canvas. Clear Creek Mid-Century is a mixture of architectural marks and the more organic forms, again in earthy colors – this time blue and brown.
Similarly, in the series if three spray paint on canvas works, Fiberglass Plant Smokestacks (I,II, and III), (image at top of page) Swanson creates the landscapes abstractions with a series of limited colors per picture, about five colors each. If the industrial fiberglass plant is the subject, it appears as only a vestige of a sketchy echo, amid the overall graffiti inspired spray paint markings. The paintings seem abstracted studies of landscape motifs mixed with, and perhaps overpowered by, the brawn and muscle memory of a street artist's quick hand.
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Venetian Red Neapolitan Green, Joseph T. Swanson |
That the restricted color wheel plays its roll in Swanson's art is further emphasized by his title on a few more pieces. Works named after, or with names including, colors contained in the paintings occurs in Venetian Red Neapolitan Green and Krylon Safety Plum Gamblin Manganese Violet. The latter title refers to two different paints; a fast drying, high-visibility spray paint used to mark hazard and caution areas and an artist color that contains manganese, which may or may not be toxic to humans.
Grasping at the meaning of Swanson's work by studying their titles and images is a bit slippery and elusive, a bit like grabbing at either oil or water and just touching on wet.
Joseph Swanson, educated at Herron School of Art, is from Richmond and has worked as an artist, an art educator and currently as Assistant Curator at RAM.
His exhibition at Reid Health continues through April.
Mark Diekhoff, February 2026
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