Dorothy Louisa May was born on 21 st  July 1922. Her artistic flair was evident from an early age and, on leaving school, she attended the Wimbledon School of Art, where she excelled. She then passed the 1942 entrance exam for the Royal College of Art, but with the interruptions of the Second World War, this was not an option she was able to pursue until 1945.

In early 1947 she was married to Captain Alfred C. Swain. The family soon expanded to three children, after which they moved to Sussex, which was to become Dorothy’s stamping ground for the next nearly sixty years. The pressures of young family life with three small children left precious little time to devote to her art but, being disciplined in her approach, allowed some painting to continue. Dorothy’s discipline paid off and between 1954-1958 she had three pieces selected for the prestigious Royal Academy exhibition.

Then came a further change of pace. Few of Dorothy’s paintings from the 1960s and the early 1970s are known to exist, probably indicating a period of relatively low production as family matters, including a fourth child, became more pressing. This persisted until a house move to Heathfield led to Dorothy meeting several local art enthusiasts seeking tuition. The resulting classes gave Dorothy’s own artistic output great impetus, particularly after relocating to the countryside near the village of Blackboys in March 1976.

Dorothy finally gave up her painting classes in 2003. With her own health starting to deteriorate, she continued to paint, but remained physically less active than before and turned increasingly to finishing or reworking canvases from the past. In 2011, she moved into a nursing unit just two miles from the house near Blackboys where artistically she had been at her most prolific. Even there, to within a couple of years of her death, she could be found with brush in hand. She passed away in January 2018 at the age of 95. Further details on her life can be found in the biography.

Dorothy considered art in its truest form to be unobtainable, but that the artist was to strive continually towards it, drawing closer in moments of clarity. Truth may take many visible forms, from pure abstraction to faithful realism, but Dorothy claimed that it is based on the expression of emotion through the use of line, mass, tone, colour and texture. Consequently, it is emotion itself which must be the strongest element, not just in a painting but throughout the process of its creation. This, and other thoughts, are considered in more depth in the page devoted to her philosophy of art.

Since emotion is personal, style too is personal and a reflection of an artist’s self. She believed that an artist must not, therefore, seek to simply emulate the work of others, since this prohibits the self-expression of emotion and truth. The strongest painting is a painting that is the artist’s own; one that reflects their emotions, their personality, their self-belief, their very soul. The purpose of art, as Dorothy saw it, is to communicate, not an object or a scene, but a personality, a thought, an emotion a spiritual quality; the focus not so much on that which is seen, but on how it is seen. Again, there is a separate page which provides a fuller discussion of her perspectives on the practice of art.