In Dublin he formed part of the Envoy arts review / McDaid's pub circle of artistic and literary figures.
[1] In London he moved into the Soho bohemia where, with the poet David Wright, he founded and co-edited X magazine.
A faithfulness of the sort was part of the bargain, part of his contract with his art… [which] had nothing to do with description…What was at stake was a faithful recreation of the truth to the artist of the experience, in the painter's case the visual experience, the artist being admittedly only one witness, one accomplice during and after the fact.
He worked in a variety of media including oils, watercolour, ink, charcoal, lithography and ceramics.
[15] The Dublin Magazine commented on Swift's "uncompromising clarity of vision which eschews the accidental or the obvious or the sentimental" and "shows his power to convey the full impact of the object, as though the spectator were experiencing it for the first time."
Time magazine:[16] "Irish critics got a look at the work of a tousled young (25) man named Paddy Swift and tossed their caps in the air.
Paddy's 30 canvases are as grey and gloomy as Dublin itself – harshly realistic paintings of dead birds and rabbits, frightened-looking girls and twisted potted plants.
Wrote Critic Tony Gray in the Irish Times: Swift 'unearths [from his subjects] not a story, nor a decorative pattern, nor even a mood, but some sort of tension which is a property of their existence.'
A motif of his work at this time was his bird imagery, which appear to have symbolic overtones, and may have even been a subtle form of self-portraiture.
[17] From early on he was involved with literary magazines,[18] such as The Bell and Envoy, contributing the occasional critical piece on art and artists he admired (e.g.Nano Reid,[19] who painted Swift's portrait in 1950).
[23] Following the Waddington exhibition Swift moved to London in November 1952, using it as his base, with occasional trips to Dublin and stays in France, Italy, Oakridge and the Digswell Arts Trust.
[24] Following his year in Italy Swift returned to Dublin, via Paris and London, for Christmas 1955, where Oonagh wanted to be for the birth of their first child.
[25] He then returned to London in 1956 and accepted Elizabeth Smart's offer to share Winstone Cottage (then owned by John Rothenstein), which contained a studio, in Oakridge, Gloucestershire.
During his residency at Digswell he painted many views of Ashwell and its Springs, one of which was presented by Henry Morris to Comberton Village College at its opening in 1959.
[26] In 1953 he shared a flat with Anthony Cronin in Camden but actually used it as his studio, staying instead with Oonagh in Hampstead – it was at this point that Swift and Wright first discussed the idea of creating a new literary magazine, a quarterly which would publish writing on artistic issues they felt to be of importance.
He designed the sets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Portuguese National Theatre Company, Lisbon (1977).
His work from this period includes portraits of his friend Francisco de Sá Carneiro (who commissioned Swift to paint his portrait when he was elected Prime Minister in 1980) and his partner, Snu Abecassis (Danish-born journalist and editor who founded the Portuguese publishing house, Publicações Dom Quixote).
"[35] Brian Fallon wrote:[40] X, a remarkable publication which, in some respects, was light years ahead of its time ...
This is criticism in the valid, active, propagandistic sense, not merely the daily or weekly grind of reviewing all sorts and conditions of artists, good and bad, but mostly mediocre.
Wyndham Lewis, it is true, was a verbose propagandist, but on the whole he was a bad critic, and somehow his propaganda almost always turns out to be some form of self-aggrandisement, whereas Swift almost always pushed the fortunes and reputations of his friends and almost never his own.
[42] In 2002 the Department of Foreign Affairs (who also awarded Swift the grant to study in Italy) sponsored the "Patrick Swift: An Irish Artist in Portugal" exhibitions that were held at the Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, and Palacio Foz in Lisbon.
[43] In 2005 the Office of Public Works, Dublin, held an exhibition of paintings, drawings and watercolours by Swift.