Ryno Swart works from his studio overlooking the sea in Simon's Town near Cape Town.
. He is one of a number of artists worldwide who had the courage of their convictions to resist the all-pervasive fashion of modernism, and to paint simply what he loves. The irony is that these artists are all keen students, but found themselves completely at odds with all conventional art teaching, so that they were forced to embark on a course of self-study. Today, after much early rejection, they find themselves having won the struggle for a place in the world of art. It is now only in the academic world, with its appointments for life, that art based on love, respect and the contemplation of beauty remains unwelcome.
. Ryno Swart is a figurative artist. His great love is for the female form, especially in dance.
. Since returning from Paris in 1977, he has spent years first at the ballet, and later at various cabaret venues around Cape Town, filling numbers of sketchbooks with action and mood studies. In his painting classes he insists upon the primacy of drawing, believing that an artist can only develop by refusing ever to copy a photograph. He works from memory, imagination, or sketches. The bulk of his painting, however, is done from direct observation. It is in the person to person contact between artist and model that the artwork comes into being, the painting being only a fossil of the experience. Another recurring theme has been the exploration of a personal mythology. Since we have stopped the study of myths and legends, we have had to start learning from nature herself, in the guise of animals or intuitive insights, often into the minds of other artists.
. Over the last number of years, his work has been exhibited extensively around South Africa and Europe. He is at present working on a number of books, and has taken to the Internet as an ideal way to spread his vision of the role of the artist among sympathetic thinkers. Much of his thinking finds a resonance in the writings of John Ruskin a century ago.
. Ryno Swart lives with his wife, Anne, also an artist, and their little boy, Jean Reynault.

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