ARTIST BIO

Amy Swartelé is an American and Belgian queer feminist artist. She paints whimsical and monstrous composite figures, beautiful grotesques and alien familiars. Using vibrant color she creates densely textured paintings integrating multiple materials and figurative styles. These combinations constitute a Mongrel Manifesto. They exist outside the spheres of the fetishized ideal, in the no-man’s land where things have no easy definitions or discrete categories. Hybrid bodies and merging spaces defy categories and hierarchies. These exist outside of constructions of gender, species or beauty. She celebrates the wonderfully strange, undefined and interconnected.

She earned her BA with honors from Wesleyan University, and her MFA in Painting from SUNY at Buffalo. Exhibitions include over 20 solo shows in the USA, France, Belgium and Canada. Swartelé has participated in over 110 group exhibitions in the USA, across Europe, and in India and Canada. She is Professor of Painting at the SUNY at Potsdam