Swihart, a California native, fell into portraiture accidentally. He started painting portraits in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, but kept it mostly quiet because portraiture is often associated with “selling out,” he said.
But the commissions kept coming.
Today, his star-studded clients include actor Clint Eastwood, former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and architect Frank Gehry, to name a few.
“Especially when I’ve painted famous people, I realize they’re just as self-conscious or wanting approval as I am,” Swihart said. “I painted Walter Cronkite years ago, and when I was working on it his secretary called me and was talking really quietly, and she said: ‘You know, Walter asked if you could tame his eyebrows.’ I was like, ‘That’s what he’s self-conscious about!’”
For corporate portraits, like a recent painting of the CEO of FedEx, Swihart noted that it’s about “painting somebody the way people see them, the way they imagine them to be …I have to make them look confident. I can’t paint the vulnerable side of them. People don’t want to see that.”