By Sena Christian
Elaina Swanson, a self-described “weird art girl,” uses art to embrace strangeness and messiness, and wants others to feel like they can too. Swanson is a Sacramento-based painter, writer and mixed-media artist, who explores personhood and coming of age in various contexts, including pop culture and American evangelicalism.
“I have always been driven by an impulse to create, but my work is also an instinctive attempt to be known; revealing myself to the extent of embarrassment in order to invite others to do the same and see each other as fellow strange creatures as opposed to being alone in our strangeness,” says Swanson, who also works as a painter for B Street Theatre.
Raised in Folsom, Swanson says she can recall how in kindergarten, a craft box of pipe cleaners and pom-pom balls would make her “electrified,” as she was drawn to the tactical act of creating. In high school, she grew interested in online creative expression, like Tumblr and DeviantArt, and considered eventually going to art school.
“At the time, it was kind of hard, because I was very much entrenched in church and church culture. I grew up very evangelical Christian,” she says, which made her often question what was and was not allowed under her faith.
Swanson earned her BFA in painting and drawing, with a minor in biblical studies, at Biola University, a Christian school in Los Angeles County. She says she still considers herself a Christian, even though she felt like an oddball in college — but, then again, she says, “The art department was full of other oddballs.”
Upon reading comedian Jenny Slate’s 2019 book “Little Weirds,” Swanson realized something about her own artistic practice. She describes the book as a compilation of abstract, juvenile essays and musings — some straight-forward and autobiographical, and others fantastical and metaphoric. “When I finished that book,” she says, “I was so overwhelmed with relief that there was someone else out there whose insides were as strange as mine, and that thought about the world in this way.”
Swanson says she has always been willing to be “the most embarrassing person in the room,” but has grown even less self-protective and more comfortable as she has aged into a now 30-year-old. Through her art, she ponders questions like: Who is she? Who is she allowed to be? She aims to uncover the emotional truths within various contexts, like life as a woman, or as a girl with ADHD, or with her “cringy” need for attention and the performative aspect of her as the jester — which manifests as Swanson being the funny friend in the group. Or how “women and neurodivergent people shape-shift to be understood,” she says. Or to examine the role of guilt and shame in her life and identity.
“It’s like a long scenic route, I guess, to saying something about myself that feels like something I can’t actually just say by using a certain set of words in a certain order,” she says. “The big reason why I focus on my pain points of shame and guilt, and doing things that are painfully sincere or embarrassing even, is in order to be the first one to kind of say the awkward thing, and then other people can go, ‘Oh, thank God.’ I want my embarrassment to be a source of relief.”
Through her artwork, she is granting others the permission to be strange.
“My practice feels like a cosmic slumber party — equal parts confessional, chaotic and kind of sacred. Specifically, a place where you reveal parts of yourself you keep from daylight,” she says. “I create from the awkward in-between spaces: between fantasy and reality; adulthood and girlhood; shame and self-acceptance.”