Simons swanson

Simons was born and raised in Charleston, SC, where her relatives have called home for nearly ten generations. Simons excelled in standard curriculum art classes from an early age and took advanced placement art classes at Bishop England, where she attended high school. Simons began her college career as a student athlete (volleyball); and while blessed with encouraging art teachers as far back as elementary school, Simons is largely self taught.

After graduating from Wofford College in 2008 with a BA in Business Economics, Simons moved to New York City in pursuit of change and challenge. For the next decade, she built a career in finance and worked for industry leading multi-billion dollar investment firms including Apollo Management and Crescent Capital Group. Inevitably, Simons longed for Charleston and eventually made her way back to the Lowcountry in 2017.  As she began to dabble back into painting in her spare time, she realized how passionate she was for creating art and decided to pursue a career as an artist whole-heartedly.

Simons typically works from a reference photograph and enjoys a wide range of subject matter from landscapes to figures. Her favorite mediums are acrylic paints and chalk pastels. Her work is often rich in color, which she achieves through various layering and blending techniques. Simons is passionate about each piece and strives to capture the essence of a scene in her work and strike emotion in its viewers.