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Swift's 'tree portraits'
From the images that are available there is a general outline of the development of Swift's tree paintings below
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I think that I probably have a real talent for painting trees if I developed it assiduously. I want to give them great density and depth pile heaps of detail into them and yet keep the sense of presence which is the whole point. - Swift, notebook, 1954

He made, at virtually every stage of his career, many paintings of trees. For much of the time the trees are part and parcel of some naturalistic scene, like those, for example, seen from the window of his studio in London. But many paintings zoom in on the motif itself, delighting in the hectic rhythms established by the orderly but profuse curvilinear sweep of the branches. Even earlier studies of back gardens reveal him to be drawn to the abstract qualities of tangled stems and foliage.
But when he gets into his stride in the London tree paintings, we can see not only the influence of Giacometti's spidery line, but also unmistakably echoes of Mondrian's remarkable, sustained deconstruction of the image of a single tree which, with one or two other fixed motifs, were subjected to a withering geometric analysis, and carried his art from involvement in several naturalistic styles to the most rigorous abstraction...
Swift, who admitted to respect, perhaps even admiration for Mondrian, did not subscribe to the idea of inexorable, linear progress towards formal abstraction... - Aidan Dunne, IMMA Patrick Swift Retrospective Catalogue,1993

It is possible not to begin to see a painting of his, properly speaking. What is not possible is to stop seeing it, once you have begun. - CH Sisson (poet), Gandon Editions, 1993

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