Bud Swenson

BIO

Bud Swenson was born in Hartford Connecticut in Oct. 1942. He graduated from the Manchester (Conn.) public school system and then was a student at North Park College and Theological Seminary (Chicago) for two years. He then spent a year working and traveling in Europe and, while there, was a student at the International Peoples College (Elsinore, Den.). Back in the United States, Swenson worked for two years at United Aircraft as a technical illustrator and took classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, Ct.).

Swenson graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1969 with a B.F.A. in fine arts and spent the next year painting in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. On returning to the States, Swenson moved to Oxbow, Maine (Aroostook County) as part of the “Americans on the Move” (back to the land movement), Time Magazine, March 15, 1976. Swenson spent ten years in Aroostook County before moving to Kennebunk, Maine in 1982.

Swenson was first drawn to abstract expressionism but soon included landscape, realism, political commentary, and social satire in his work. In most recent years Swenson has turned to sculpture, working with lead, copper and steel. Swenson has been a long time member of the Union of Maine Visual Artists.

GROUP SHOWS

1978 All-Maine Biennial, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME

1995 Artist on War, UMVA, Ellsworth and Bangor Libraries

1996 Sex & Gender: Who’s Who and What’s What, UMVA, Blum Gallery, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME

2006 Church and State: Politics and Religion, Blum Gallery, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME

2005 War Flowers, From Sword to Plowshares, UMVA traveling exhibit

SOLO SHOWS

2001 Eating the Enemy with Yum Yum Apples and Elusive Liberty, 45 Degrees Gallery, Kennebunk, ME

2003 The Last Fish Supper, Kennebunk Free Library, Kennebunk, ME

2005 The Mousam Meets the Atlantic Ocean, Kennebunk Free Library, Kennebunk, Maine

2005 Fragments and Neopetroglyphs, Collette’s Cup, Biddeford, ME

2007 Portraits in a Time of War (the American Flag collaged), Kennebunk Free Library, Kennebunk, ME

2016 Commissioned by God (the bible collaged and deconstructed), UMVA Gallery, Portland, ME