Cherry Sweig
Cherry Sweig's paintings give new meaning to the term artistic diversity. Whether she's creating color-splashed plein air works of California and beyond, gyotaku (nature imprints), scroll paintings, custom tile murals or oils of endangered equines, Sweig has mastered them all.
"I have a lot of diverse styles, but I have noticed that each of the styles helps each other," she said. "When I paint oils and I go back to watercolors, my watercolors are better, so I believe that each of the mediums enhance each other."
Sweig has painted since an early age, and she has her first mentor, Sylvia Love, to thank for it. Love was her grandmother's cousin and an impressionistic colorist painter.
"She painted like Monet and enrolled me in art classes at 15," said Sweig. "She took me painting plein air with her, and at times I feel like I'm painting like her."
Sweig considers herself a "colorist."
"A colorist means you use color to evoke an emotion," she said. "Colorists study the relationships of complimentary colors, the tertiary colors and all the different colors of the color wheel and then go through values and how they bounce off next to each other."
A graduate of San Diego State University with a degree in graphic design and fine art, Sweig has had a varied career, including video game designer, advertising art director and art curator, but she now prefers working in the solitude of her own Poway studio.
Sweig enjoys painting the atmosphere and spirit of the places she visits, and she's covered a good part of the globe. A frequent visitor to Europe, she will soon spend another month there, painting in Belgium, Spain and France.
“Art has a unique way of speaking to the soul. There’s something special about the way an artist’s touch on a canvas can stir an emotion or awaken a cherished memory. Perhaps it’s a response to the color, the style or the subject matter. It changes the way we look at life or where we dwell. When I hear that my art has made a difference in someone’s home or helped to save an endangered species, I know I have achieved my ultimate design. My studio is in California... In fact, it is also wherever I set up my easel for plein air painting! Ever since the first time I drew a brush over a canvas, I knew it would also draw my direction as an artist. It’s amazing how it simply came to me. And now, after careers in Graphic Design, Sega Video Games and the Japanese art of Gyotaku, my art has come full circle."
