Biography   |   Shows, Exhibitions and Awards   |    Men and Machines   |   Route 66: A Painter's Journey

Discography : The Pop (Rock and Roll)

Albums

  • Go!  –  Arista Records, 1979
  • The Pop  –  Automatic Records, 1977
  • Hearts And Knives  –  Rhino Records, 1981

Compilations

  • We're Desperate: The La Scene  –  Rhino Records, 1993
  • Shake It Up: American Power Pop II  –  Rhino Records, 1993
  • The Golden Decade Of Power Pop  –  Varese Sarabande Records, 2005

Biography (continued)   |   previous page

Swanson’s work has met with increasing acclaim, and has been compared to that of Edward Hopper, with a similar stark depiction of reality and a surreal tilt. He has been commissioned to paint some of the West’s most impressive landscapes and architecture, and his work has been exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles, Chicago, Santa Fe, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Jackson and Cody, Wyoming, Bozeman, Billings, and Livingston, Montana. His paintings also hang in private and corporate collections throughout this country, as well as in Europe.

In 2004, David decided to return to school to get additional knowledge of his metier and complete his college degree (which he had interrupted many years earlier to pursue a career in music, Rock and Roll to be exact, a fact heretofore unmentioned in this biographical material, and which will be expanded on at a later point). He attended Montana State University, finally graduating in May of 2007. It was a great experience for him, though challenging on a number of levels. It gave him a new lease on the creative direction of his art, and enhanced his skills enabling him to move into this new phase with greater confidence.

This new direction is a continuation of the geometric-biomorphic aesthetic of his earlier work, that of the architecture set in the landscape, to that of the human form in the architectural (or mechanistic) context. It is the same basic juxtaposition, but, in a sense, reversed, and from a closer vantage point, accentuating the human action in and upon these environments.

By way of preparing for this conception of his directional development (for this was quite by design), he took a figurative painting class at MSU, under the instruction of Julia Carpenter, in order to hone his skills in depicting the human form. These paintings [the nudes] are some of the fruits of that class.

Swanson states, “The well proportioned human form is arguably the most beautiful of God’s creations, and any artist does well to study it and use it in his or her own work. It is probably the best and fullest expression of the meaning of human existence. It is the physical manifestation of the myriad qualities of the human spirit, its limitations and its aspirations, its perfection and its imperfection.”

Swanson is currently doing a series paintings of railroad workers operating and maintaining the locomotives and cars of Montana Rail Link and BNSF railroads at the Livingston, Montana yard.