Art Seen & Scene: The Real Deal, Edward Swift, a Storied Life

By John Dodge Meyer and Meryl Truett

Many of us know who artist Edward Swift is; after all, he’s lived in San Miguel since the early 2000’s. But when we came to interview him recently at his charming home and studio in Colonia Montes de Loreto, we were awe struck as he wove the tales of his upbringing in the Big Thicket area of West Texas, his decades in New York City and the myriad influences and adventures along the way.

Growing up in East Texas in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Edward quickly realized that geographically and spiritually the Big Thicket area really owed more to the zeitgeist of the Mississippi Delta or the South Carolina Low Country than it did to the rest of the Texas. His was a large extended family with many cousins of all shapes, sizes, temperaments and flaws. That made a lasting impression. He grew up in his grandparent’s house after his father was killed in World War II and his mother moved her family in with them. He describes his grandfather (later the main character in one of his many novels) as “a mystical man” and “a happy drunk.” It was a folk-art culture; “Everybody was making something.” Two of the greatest characters from his young life were a fiddlemaker and musician, Horty Cain who Edward describes as a ‘modern day Orpheus!’ But instead of taming the animals with his music, Horty claimed to have cleared his pond of all the beaver with his screechy fiddling! His second character inspiration was Maynard Davis, a man who claimed he had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Edward says the man was tortured by this obvious fantasy.

Between these characters and his families’ story-telling and gossip, Edward quickly realized he was surrounded by mad hatters!The family home was close to the Alabama-Coushata reservation and Edward became aware of, and fascinated by the ceremony and ritual when he learned about Native American art and dance (later in life he came to be enamored of the Kachina tradition of the Northern Pueblo). He attended a Baptist school, Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. Edward and his friends playfully called it “Hard on Sinners University.” It was there that he majored in drama and found himself drawn to the absurdist dramatists and The Theatre of the Absurd. Soon enough, Edward’s burgeoning dreams and plans began to outgrow the confines of his youthful situation.

Not surprisingly the second major life event (after the loss of his father) was his logical decision to move to New York City. Things accelerated quickly in 1960’s New York City. Not one to let this amazing opportunity fail, Edward made sure he had a solid financial footing at all times. His 40 year pattern was to ‘punch the clock’ mainly during the day, get up early to write, do his visual art on weekends and somehow still manage to have an active social life in between! He worked in bookstores where to his surprise, many of the customers, when finding out he was from the deep South, would ask him to tell stories of his early life and relate any insider gossip he might know about the questioner’s favorite Southern author!

This exercise actually confirmed in his mind how important that quirky upbringing had been and unlike many young people who leave home for the big city, he never forsook his roots. One of his first New York achievements was to complete four years of literature and creative writing study with Marguerite Young at The New School For Social Research. Not surprisingly, the author Eudora Welty became a big influence and helped confirm Edward’s growing belief that the themes in his work; the paradox of human relationships, the importance of keen observation and the supreme importance of ‘place’ were indeed foundational to Welty’s success as a writer too. After 40 years in New York, working for The American Ballet Theatre and Reuters; writing novels and producing visual art, Edward Swift came to San Miguel in 2006. He had first come here in 1979 to “get away from the city and finish a novel,” so he was familiar with the charms of this Pueblo Mágico. Now, we have sole pleasure of his company, his sardonic wit and the art that is the culmination of a lifetime of his own perceptive observations.

See Edward Swift’s visionary work at The Chapel of Jimmy Ray’s Spring opening on March 15th and at Mariló Carral’s Gallery in Fábrica de la Aurora in April.

Meryl Truett is an artist and workshop instructor in San Miguel de Allende. IG @madinsma www.meryltruett.com John Dodge Meyer is and artistand writer living in San Miguel working on his memoir.