Images from an artistic life
Charles Swank retrospective on display in Yachats this weekend
By “Dangerous” Dan Stein
For the TODAY
How did artist Charles Swank, a resident of Olympia, Washington, end up with a Retrospective Art Show in Yachats? Sometimes good things just happen. By the unlikeliest of paths, Polly Plumb Productions is able to welcome Charles Swank for the retrospective, “50 Years Exploring Inner Worlds” at the Yachats Commons this Presidents Day weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 15 and 16.
Swank is an old friend of mine; and I have been a collector of his work since we met in Santa Cruz in the late 1970s. On a trip last spring, Swank took me up into his attic where more than 200 paintings from the past 20 years were rolled up. Long story short: I came home with a pickup load of them, promising to try to find homes for them. Polly Plumb was gracious enough to offer to host the show.
Swank is a very unusual human being. He learned early on what he wanted from life and stuck with it. Turns out it was two things. To paint and live a deeply spiritual life. He has managed to combine the two in his art.
After completing an MFA at Yale, in the words of one of his mentors, Swank “committed artistic suicide” by moving from the East Coast art scene to small town Santa Cruz to raise a family. What followed was a lifetime of day jobs, but the freedom to paint as he wanted. Among his jobs he has been a house painter, a butler for McDonald's heiress Mrs. Joan Kroc and a teacher's aid to developmentally disabled kids, a job he loved.
What he didn’t do was sell paintings. And this was by choice. He had no stomach for the business world or self-promotion. A very late change of heart and the offer of help from his old friend, gives you the opportunity to view and own, if you wish, some beautiful works of art at reasonable prices.
Modestly and tongue-in-cheek, Swank maintains that these paintings have saved the world. And in the next breath, said that compared to anything else, art — even his — has absolutely no value. You decide. At the least, these paintings are tickets to a world that most of us rarely think to visit.
His paintings are not your usual coast art of waves and trees. They are abstracted geometric visions, beautiful, accessible and fun. You might experience them as spiritual, ethereal or even psychedelic. Even if you are not an art aficionado, they will surprise and please you.
At the artist’s request, all paintings will be offered for sale on a sliding scale, most between $200 and $2,000. Some smaller ones will be available for less.
And, as this weekend lands just after Valentine's Day, all visitors will receive a free gift: a piece of art that you can cut out of certain select canvases or choose from some pre-cuts. Everyone, who so chooses, will go home with no less than a square foot of art.
The Charles Swank retrospective will be open from 10 am to 4 pm this Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 15 and 16, at the Yachats Commons, located at 441 Hwy. 101. For more information, go to pollyplumb.org.