Camille Swift

I am a painter and a trapeze artist.

A persistent fascination with swirls, billows, furls, tentacles, curves and coils plagues me. Fearsome, feathered and furred demi-gods pursue me: I call them “les femmes farouches”. Wild women, savage women. Therianthropes. They come from the jungles of my imagination, the dark, mossy forests of my subconscious, the spongy underbellies of dreams. They stalk and slither from one fairy tale to the next, from myth to legend, seizing these fragile but toxic ideas of femininity therein and pulling them apart, to see what their insides are like, gobbling them up, spitting them out and then looking back at me out of their gleaming eyes as if to say, “What? We didn’t make this mess. Nothing to see here.” And they glide away into the trees, wings rustling, teeth snapping…and I have no choice but to follow them.

© Camille Swift