JANE SWAVELY: Supernatural

Night Gallery is delighted to present Supernatural, an exhibition of new oil paintings on canvas by New York-based artist Jane Swavely, marking her inaugural exhibition with the gallery and her Los Angeles debut.

Jane Swavely has worked on the Bowery for over forty years, and her views of the New York City sky and Lower Manhattan life permeate her paintings. She’s witnessed gray winters, hazy summers, a fading punk scene, and drunk poets staggering home. These experiences manifest across her canvases as abstract color fields punctuated by jagged, disruptive lines and fragmented borders. The work evokes the tensions and layered histories of the Bowery itself.

Swavely translates the city’s energy into luminous paintings, layering dynamic strokes of paint while allowing moments of stillness and light to fracture and recede. In the large-scale painting Supernatural, which gives the show its title, sections of silver, lavender, and pearl jut against each other, creating a force field that is both explosive and contained. The artist credits the quieter elements in her paintings to her time in the Hudson Valley, where she regularly retreats from city life. Across her canvases, reflections of urban and natural concerns collide.

Before arriving at her mature style, Swavely made landscape-inspired work. Over the past decade, she’s transitioned to a process grounded in memory, intuition, and precision. Her involvement with A.I.R. Gallery, a women’s artists' collective in New York, played a crucial role during this evolution, supporting her shift from landscape paintings to the more ethereal style she now embraces.

The artist describes her practice as “supernatural,” shaped by personal rules and a distinct philosophy. She draws inspiration from American painting histories, bending the concerns of her predecessors to suit her own alchemical approach. She paints directly on canvas atop her studio floor, navigating the work from all angles. Her movements coalesce with the piece's evolving form, influencing its final structure.

Swavely’s work is a space of deliberate reduction, where every mark is essential. The artist insists that her paintings are objects, allowing her stretcher bars to push up against the canvas. These skeletal structures remind us that her work is as much about form and material as it is about color and composition. The paintings feel backlit, illuminated from within, like glowing portals—to a specific, memory-laden site, and to a supernatural place far beyond.

–Paige Greco