American painter Ena Swansea plays with an absence of light and colour, mixing oil and graphite to create layers of grey. Swansea’s dark grounds serve as a base to the strokes of white that offer a sort of inverse depth. World Headquarters depicts a feminine world of gossip and party lines, serious in shading, but teasingly quirky thanks to the trio of girly phones. Luncheon on the Grass comes across as a very private picnic, perhaps an updated version of the Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe and Fall is a portrait of 1930's star Louise Brooks. Swansea reaches into the past to update her eerily compelling style. And the pink phones don’t hurt, even though one of them should have been rotary dial.

Artist: Ena Swansea
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