Taganyahu Swaby

I was born in Kingston, Jamaica to Rastafarian Artist parents. My father is a draughtsman, painter and actor to name a few of his passions. My mom used to play the bass and is one of the most psychic women I know. With my dad I was always around art and always encouraged to create. My art teacher from elementary school came to my house to meet my parents cause she was so taken by my work. As a teen I moved up to the states which was traumatizing for me. I was always an enigma, even as a kid in Kingston having dreadlocks. But Leaving my land where everyone looked like me (more or less) to a place where there were more white people than anything shook me up. I rarely considered myself different other than my hair and the only way I found to deal with it was to create.I started playing the drums, I painted, I watched a lotta movies. When the time came to go to college, I went to SUNY Purchase for the Visual Arts. I painted, drew and made my concentration in printmaking. In my junior year I started doing stop motion animation with a Super 8 camera that a friend gave me. Upon graduating from College in 2001 I went to work for a friend's Film Production company. I had began making my own experimental films in school along with my stop motion. I worked in film for years in the 2000's until I remembered that I had gotten into the craft to make my own work, I moved back to Jamaica in 2004 and made a bunch of music videos for musicians. Then I applied for an artist residency in Salvador Bahia, Brasil in 2005. During that residency I began working on my first full length feature film. That took years to complete and during that time I began to make woodcuts again and continued making stop motion. In 2012 with the film complete I decided to change gears completely and went to school for Acupuncture. In 2015 I graduated from Acupuncture school and began practicing full-time in 2017. For years I worked teaching kids the arts in the public school system of NYC. After 10 years of that I was burned out from that and I wanted to do healing work. Acupuncture has also helped me find understanding of myself in so many areas of my life. This learning process keeps unfolding. It has also provided me with a stable income that I may finally dedicate more time to the arts. This year I moved out of the city to Upstate New York with the goal of making my artwork a more regular part of my routine. I'm grateful to see this process unfolding quite beautifully.