Glynis Sweeny
Encyclopedia
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and caricaturist who is known for lampooning political and business figures in newspapers, newsweeklies, and consumer magazines.
Sweeny graduated with a degree in graphic design from Rochester Institute of Technology. She later honed her illustrating skills under the direction of the iconic Alan E. Cober
Alan E. Cober
Alan E. Cober was an illustrator. His artwork appeared in The New York Times, Life, and Time. He also illustrated a series of children's books, called Cober's Animals....
at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, also commonly known as the University at Buffalo or UB, is a public research university and a "University Center" in the State University of New York system. The university was founded by Millard Fillmore in 1846. UB has multiple campuses...
.
Soon after, Sweeny became a staff designer and illustrator for The Detroit News
The Detroit News
The Detroit News is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival Free Press's building. The News absorbed the Detroit Tribune on February 1, 1919, the Detroit Journal on July 21, 1922, and on November 7, 1960,...
, working alongside other notable illustrators like Don Asmussen
Don Asmussen
Don Asmussen is an American cartoonist working for the San Francisco Chronicle and Universal Press Syndicate.He was born in Rhode Island...
. During this time, Sweeny developed as a caricaturist, and received national recognition; an original illustration of musician Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
is now part of a Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
collection. While at the News, Sweeny began to attract a long roster of clients, including Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, GQ and Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
.
In 1995, frustrated by the long Detroit Newspapers strike, Sweeny left the paper and moved to New York City to focus on her publishing clients in the area. Her client roster also includes Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, Business Week, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
, Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
, The Atlantic, Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
. She also illustrated the cover for the book, "The Hammer Comes Down," a biography of Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
.
Wax-based colored pencil is Sweeny's medium of choice and she uses a unique burnishing technique for her illustrations to create color depth. Increasingly her works contain a mixture of pencil illustration and computer-based illustration. Sweeny's more recent work is notably less commercial and more introspective, esoteric and sublime. She has two recurrent themes that now dominate their work: windows into her subjects' torso that can reveal various types of hardware, and complex doodles, called "Brain Clouds," that reveal patchworks of seemingly random thoughts and images hovering above human busts.
Sweeny has appeared in the Society of Illustrators
Society of Illustrators
The Society of Illustrators is a professional society based in New York City. Founded in 1901, the mission of the Society is to promote the art and appreciation of illustration, as well as its history...
, RSVP, American Illustration, and Communication Arts juried annuals and has won illustration awards from the Society of Newspaper Design and the Society of Professional Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Society of Professional Journalists , formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. It was established in April 1909 at DePauw University, and its charter was designed by William Meharry Glenn. The ten founding members of...
. In 2008, she appeared in a group gallery show at the Rockland Center for the Arts called "Seven: Out of This World." In 2011, Sweeny was among several artists chosen to reinterpret the art of Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
for a gallery show at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in celebration of the museum's 40th anniversary. Her illustration, entitled Blue, recast the famous Parisian bistro scene in Hopper's Soir Bleu.
Sweeny resides in Nyack, NY.