Mia Brownell "Leda and the Swan"

Mia Brownell is a New York and Connecticut-based artist whose paintings use the illusionistic conventions of traditional food still-life painting, simultaneously referencing 17th-century Dutch realism and the coiling configurations of scientific molecular imaging. The culture, science, and environmental issues surrounding the global industrial food complex often inspire Brownell’s sci-fi still-life paintings.

Brownell has received numerous awards and honors, including the New York Foundation for the Arts (SOS); New York State Council on the Arts (Arts Westchester Artist Grant); US Department of State (Art in Embassies); Public Art Commissions (University of Connecticut Health Center and the city of Geneva, NY); and Connecticut State University Research Grants. Past residencies include Millay Colony and the American Academy of Rome. Brownell’s work has been cited in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Village Voice, Boston Globe, Artnet Magazine, and Hi-Fructose.

Mia is a Professor of Art and Design in New Haven at Southern Connecticut State University where she has been teaching painting and drawing for over 25 years.

“The ongoing series Leda and the Swan has evolved over the past few years as a tangent project from my main body of work about food. Leda and the Swan is a story from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, rapes Leda, the wife of the king of Sparta. The story generated a significant number of paintings, sculptures, and other artworks throughout antiquity with depictions focusing on a recumbent Leda with copulatory swan. It appears that the post-coitus rest was what captured the imagination of most of the artists. Examining this story today is meaningful in light of the recent US Supreme Court ruling to repeal women’s reproductive rights and, like Leda, establish a woman’s body as a repository, her consent notwithstanding. In my Leda and the Swan series, Leda is present but she is not overtly depicted. What drives these works is the imagined aftermath or role reversal of the copulation, rather than the appearance or purpose of her body. Two paintings in the series depict Zeus, in the form of a swan, dead and undergoing various stages of meal preparation; Leda is the implied chef in these pieces. Another painting of blood-stained sheets suggests multiple narratives including abortion (of the fowl fetus), slaughter, rape, or menstruation.” - Mia Brownell