SCOTT SCHWAGER, ‘ART & WALKING’
Art & Talking,
Chipping Norton
4th-28th October 2025
Manhattan born Londoner Scott Schwager will debut his paintings, drawings and research into walking at Art & Talking Gallery and Art Centre in Chipping Norton, shedding light on how his studio and walks inform each other.
Schwager’s paintings weave stories collaged from the news, sketchbooks and video sketches from his walks, drawings and photos, depicting colourful people, plants and animals. The figures in Schwager’s paintings and drawings appear as the people and wildlife we walk by every day. With a stylistic nod to English painter Roger Hilton’s figurative paintings, Schwager shares similar concerns in with act of painting, abstraction, and an interest in the quotidian.
The paintings tell of a world of their own, narrating walks in foreign cities and encounters with other beings, such as birds, butterflies and sometimes otherworldly plants. Here the unknown plants and animals are detailed sometimes more than the people. Schwager’s scenes emerge as imaginary compositions, with people and animals overlapping at the seams and carving out the negative spaces of his depiction.
His work embodies an artist’s imaginary world, more vivid and colourful than most places on Earth, drawing on the rich, complex, and sometimes dark dimensions of human existence. In these moments, we seem to question what possibilities may arise from the unique vision of an artist?
In our era of post truth, AI, brain rot, fighting and fact checking, can artists present another view in paint and pen on canvas and paper. Is this the artist's view of the world, or what it can be? These paintings and drawings offer an artist’s view, a distinctive language portraying walkers, politicians and familiar faces in newly found narratives.
Schwager narrates a fictional universe. The series places people, plants and leaves that he has observed locally, from up North and further afield, on the same planes. Here plant leaves, butterflies and birds are side by side, suggestive of another place and time, another reality: a bird’s beak touches a lady’s hair; a lady carries a flag between cliffs; an umbrella shields a child. The vibrant colours lure us in, but beneath their surface lies a more complex story.
The paintings depict imaginary species of birds, butterflies, sea turtles, flowers and trees. Are these relatives to goldfinches, to green parakeets legendarily released in London by Jimi Hendrix, empress purple and common blue butterflies, who fly to Spain in the winter? Like Kew Gardens, and Golders Hill Park, near the artist’s studio, the trees pedigree is millenniums old and curation relatively new; an English Oak, a Japanese maple, an American black walnut show side by side. The black walnut self-propagates every two years; the grey squirrels are bigger than the brown; the butterflies fly to Africa for the winter.
Far from a simple commentary on large-scale issues, Schwager’s work distills both figures and timely themes into minimal, symbolic forms. Schwager’s imaginary world grapples with the time spent thinking on his walks and in the studio, and creates another world, one portrayed with a distinguishable hand, eye and ear for what he draws, sees and hears.
Beyond the paintings, a room with photographs and consideration of walks fill the second room in the gallery. Between 2011 and 2018 Schwager made 18 walks, which he calls Walk & Talks, in England, Canada, Switzerland, Scotland, and Spain. He developed these walks as a contemporary collaborative art practice during the time he researched walking at Chelsea. The research reflects consideration of the walks during a vibrant time among the creative milieu of Chelsea College of Arts.
Schwager has continued these self-named Walk & Talks, in Chipping Norton, where all are welcome to join. One intriguing aspect of Schwager’s research is the circles that emerge. From forming a circle before the walk, walking in a circle to complete a walk, to circularly expanding the spread of ideas through walking and building circles of friends.
These circles contribute to research in walking art and may interest those interested in art, sociology, archaeology and other social sciences. The circles, figures, photographs and text exhibited are selected from Schwager’s research on walking art. They include characteristics that may be drawn on to make and reflect on future Walk&Talk. The research exhibited includes how Walk&Talk involves walkers in decision-making through dialogue as well as how Walk&Talk as an art differs from ‘walking and talking’ in media, education, politics, and other creative walking.
The research on walking builds on modes of collaboration and sociologist Michael Farrell’s studies of circles among artists, poets and painters. The show progresses to the walks positioned as a meta-text that includes writing, photographs, text and reflections. Through Schwager’s research on his Walk & Talks, the walks emerge as collaborative, contemporary art pieces, and as available for others to build artist walks aside them. During October, the exhibition will unfold including an artist’s walk with Scott from Art & Talking, a visual circumambulation piece made from the 18 walks, and short responses to the walks from artists and others in the walks.
