Artist Biography & Facts

David Carrick Swing

Born in Cincinnati, OH on Sept. 26, 1864. By 1892 Swing had settled in Los Angeles. He was president of the Los Angeles Engraving Company until 1914 and had a studio in Pasadena before moving to Phoenix in 1917. Swing then painted Arizona desert scenes until his death there on June 1, 1945. Exh: GGIE, 1939 (14 murals). In: Phoenix Public Library; Masonic Temple (Phoenix).

Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Artists of the American West (Doris Dawdy); Splitter, p.131; Los Angeles Herald, 3-27-1892, p.9.

Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here.

David Swing was one of Phoenix's most prolific and best known artists in the 1920's and 30's.  Over sixty years after his death, Swing's artistic legacy remains strong although many details of his personal life are sketchy.

A multi-talented man, Swing made his living at various times as a painter, interior designer, engraver, landscape artist and muralist.  He was also an accomplished violinist and trumpeter who played in orchestras in Cincinnati, Pasadena and Phoenix. His palette was typically softer than those of his colleagues who painted traditional Southwest landscapes; his style was characterized by the "use of delicate brown and blue tones". It was once written his representations were "meant to soothe, not challenge, the senses".

Swing was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1864, the fourth of seven children. His father, Alfred, was a professor of Greek and art at Batavia College.  David grew up in Newport, Kentucky and apprenticed with the William M. Donaldson Lithograph Company for several years in Cincinnati. By 1892 he had moved to California where he owned and operated David Swing and Company, a landscape and interior design firm located in downtown Los Angeles. He later served as president of the Los Angeles Engraving Company and had a studio in Pasadena.

In 1917 Swing relocated to Phoenix and began creating many of his works on a large scale.  Census records show he lived for over twenty years at 35 Palm Lane in Phoenix (just north of the present day location of the Phoenix Art Museum) with his wife Margaret, five years his junior, and their three children. During the 1930's Swing was an art instructor at Phoenix Junior College.

Swing was one of Arizona's most active WPA era artists. His first major work involved the painting of landscape murals in the Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Papago Park. Swing's landscapes were painted over murals created by another Phoenix artist, John Leeper, because Leeper's murals contained nude figures. "Public outcry at the impropriety of Leeper's work", caused by the concern the nudes would be offensive to the TB patients, led to Swing's commission in 1935.

In addition to Papago Park, Swing painted murals for Phoenix Junior College, the State Capitol, the Shrine and Masonic temples, and the Orpheum Theatre.  According to Peter Bermingham, in The New Deal in the Southwest, no other Arizona WPA era artist could match Swing for "sheer acreage of painted canvas".  In 1936 he collaborated with Florence Blakeslee in another WPA project, designing twenty-three sculptured reliefs for the grand stand at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.

Swing's most ambitious project came when he was commissioned by the state legislature to paint fourteen murals for Arizona's exhibit at the Golden Gate International exposition in San Francisco in 1939.  He was paid a total of $3,750 for the commission, which was granted as "recognition of his standing as one of the state's greatest artists."  Swing was assisted "in preparation of the murals" by Scottsdale artist Marjorie Thomas.

Framed in saguaro ribs, the five foot by ten foot canvases represented subjects from throughout the state including the Grand Canyon, Tumacacori Mission, the Territorial Prison in Yuma, the San Francisco Peaks, the Painted Desert, and the Cochise Head in Chiricahua National Monument.  An Arizona Highways article in June, 1939 predicted the exhibit would "do much to increase transcontinental travel through Arizona..." The murals are currently in the permanent collection of the Arizona State Capitol Museum.

A philosopher as well as a musician and artist, Swing once wrote "Happiness is the most accommodating of all things.  It will come to a cottage as soon as to a palace. You need never wait for any outward pomp to come.  As the sunshine of the Almighty will shine through a simple vine as richly as upon the gilded dome of a temple, so happiness falls with equal sweetness falls upon all whose minds are at peace and in whose hearts flow the good thoughts and good sentiments of life."

Swing was suffering from tuberculosis near the end of his life, and in the early 1940's he moved into one of the bungalows in Phoenix at 40th & Camelback on the Cudia Movie City, at the invite S.B.P. Cudia.  In exchange, Swing painted several murals for Cudia City. 

David Swing died on June 12, 1945 in Phoenix.

Source:
http://www.bluecoyotegallery.com/DavidSwingPaintingsandArtwork.htm