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Route 66: A Painter's Journey

"The debris of our culture and it’s people fascinates me -- especially the structures we leave behind. I’m constantly amazed by the enormous, undulating, linear quality of the American landscape, and I love to interpret landscapes and buildings caught in a fleeting instant, and a moment of light."

That is one reason why, in the summer of 2001, Swanson embarked on a road trip along Route 66, as so many have done before him. But it wasn’t the first time: he and his family drove the road from Illinois to California to start a new life in the late sixties; the swiftly passing, evocative images he remembered from that trip as a boy made him return as an artist with a passionate desire to tell the story of the Mother Road in a series of paintings. So for several weeks, Swanson drove, painted, took photographs collecting images of many of the icons and landmarks along the route. He then returned to Montana and began to paint.

In June 2007, the series of twenty four paintings of Swanson’s impressions of Route 66 were shown together for the first time at a one man show at Chaparral Fine Art on Main
Street in Bozeman, Montana. Plans are underway to show this body of work in museums along the Route.

The choice of subject matter in this series is breathtaking: everything from a dog wandering through the back streets of the tiny town of Islet, to a bold and graphic Cadillac Ranch, complete with the inevitable graffiti artist, to a scene in old Oklahoma City that somehow captures the lost dreams of the many who drove the road in a way that is strangely moving.

Swanson’s work has met with increasing acclaim, and has been compared to that of Edward Hopper – there is the same stark depiction of reality, the same slightly surreal tilt. He has been commissioned to paint some of the West’s most impressive landscapes and architecture, and his work is exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles, Flagstaff, Chicago, Cody and Bozeman. His paintings also hang in private and corporate collections throughout this country, as well as in Europe.

If you have any questions, or would like more information about the Route 66 series of paintings or folio of eight Route 66 prints, please contact us either by e-mail or by calling (406) 222 3409.

See the Route 66 paintings and prints other subjects in David's portfolio >