Arcana Verte (meaning Language of the birds) is the handle of fine artist and craftsman Aeiden Swan who paints the natural world seen through a veil of myth, mysticism and dream imagery; inspired by history.
Her magically charged depictions time travel from our primal ancestors to a romantic near history picking up inspiration all along the way.
Her art is also incarnate in the form of jewellery created from leather, natural found objects, beads, resin and whatever else speaks to her.
Her work has been used in international film productions and her current project is creation of a tarot deck.
Portrait by Ric Shields
About Aeiden
Æiden Swan is known by various monikers throughout the interwebs, some more contested than others.
She was born in a cursed city in the Eastern Cape and completed something approximating schooling. Time not spent incarcerated within a 70's facebrick hellhole filled with the damned, however, involved diverse adventures such as living on a yacht, pyromania moonlighting as ceramics, endeavours involving large power tools and a gargantuan collection of vintage science fiction.
A short stint in technical college was gratefully aborted. Fleeing by bus to late-Nineties Johannesburg to endure employment as a bad graphic designer was all quite traumatic enough for her to quit art and open a couture house. This entity usurped her life and afterlife for 18 years while achieving minor cult status under her stolen identity. Eventually, the call of the wild became too strong to resist and the fashion house met its spluttering end on the summer solstice of 2017.
Since then Aeiden has devoted herself once again to the arts. She works in inks as a painter, as a performance artist, and leatherworker. She decocts many of the liquid pigments used in these experiments from feral reagents hunted and harvested at twilight (or after breakfast, or whenever it's not too hot or dark and there's no people around). The subtle hues are distilled down to a stain through exploiting a sideline in modern alchemy and a sordid past which involved ungodly quantities of cooking.
Aeiden's art is one expression of a personalized mythology mashing together a mysticism that slithers free from definitions, a codependent relationship with the natural world, and a perspective on humanity warped by too much isolation in younger years, absinthe, and two decades in retail.
Her primary influences are her nightmares, random pieces of floatsam picked up in unnamable places, as well as lint-covered snacks mined from the bottom of her handbag and last year's winter coat.
When not painting, Swan lurks in caves and works in the film industry creating distant worlds.
She is a member of the Karoo Gothic Collective
Show History
Waka Waka (group show) - Agog Gallery (Johannesburg) 08- 2018
Chimera (solo) GroundArt Cape Town (cancelled due to censorship) 2019
Wild Wildlife (group show) Glen Carlou Gallery (Stellenbosch) 04-2020
Paper (Group Show) Glen Carlou Gallery (stellenbosch) 11-2020
Pop Up (group show) The Cook Sisters Gallery (Cape Town 10-2020
This is Art (faire) Cape Town International Conference Centre 11-2021
Hypnotickles (group show - cape town) 04-2022
Know Thyself (group show) Escap3 Gallery 07-22
Beauty is a Savage Garden (group show) Escap3 Gallery 10-2022
This Is Art (faire) Cape Town International Conference Centre 11-2022
Karoo Gothic (group show - collective) Stokvel Gallery 11-2022
Night Swimming (Group show) Escap3 Gallery 03-2023
Spring Salon at Melkbos Atelier (group show) Escap3 Gallery 09-2023
Unnamed (group show) Kevin Stanley Gallery Cape Town) 10-2023
Film Work
Raised by wolves (series 2020)
Breakdown of soft props
Hero prop creation - Snake skin
Hero prop creation - Cave Paintings
The Watch (Series 2021)
Breakdown of paper props
Hero prop creation - wizard's spell book
Around the world in 80 Days (series 2021)
creation of hero prop - hotel curtain
breakdown of soft props - hotel room
Ghost Party (series 2022)
Hero prop creation - Children's drawings
Invasion S2 (series 2022)
Creation of hero props - children's drawings, interior map of spacecraft
1923 (series)
Breakdown of soft props