A keen observer, he was inspired by the people and the landscape that surrounded him. His main subject was landscape painting, which for him was a vehicle for exploring a universal truth and “where he saw the presence of Christ in nature.” (Raul Furtado, George Swinton: painter of the Canadian Prairies, WAG artist file). Swinton declared his love for the Prairies and the North, and like Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald showed a concern for a more universal relationship with nature. Richard Williams writes that it was Winnipeg and the surrounding Prairie landscape that allowed Swinton to not worry so much about style, but to commune with the subject matter, revealing “its spirit through himself in the spirit of the medium.” (Richard Williams, unpublished manuscript, 1963, One-man exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by George Swinton, brochure Arch/FA Library, U of M artist file). This inspiration is evident in Under Dark Cloud, Dead Plane (1996), where Swinton communicates more than just natural phenomena. A prolific artist, he had a dozen solo exhibitions at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. His paintings hang there, as well as at the National Gallery in Ottawa.

Although he wrote considerably about art and artists, he was perhaps most remembered for his passion for Inuit art, which began as a hobby after his first working trip to the North for the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1957. As an artist and art teacher by profession, he had been asked to write a report for Hudson’s Bay House on Inuit art. After completing this report, Swinton was asked to write more reports and made yearly trips to the region, amazed by the individuality of the places. His experiences there enabled him to begin a definitive collection of Inuit art and become the recognized authority in the field. He went on to write several books that led to a greater awareness of Inuit art, including Eskimo Sculpture published in 1965, and Sculpture of the Eskimo, published in 1972 and re-released in 1999 as Sculpture of the Inuit. The Winnipeg Art Gallery presented The Swinton Collection of Inuit Art in 1987, which reflected his personal taste in Inuit art and affection for the Inuit people of the North and gave viewers a privileged look at an individual’s private passion for collecting. In 1960, he gave 130 sculptures to the Winnipeg Art Gallery and 240 works to the Art Gallery of Ontario that represented some two dozen communities and more than 200 artists from across the Arctic. Swinton later became critical of Inuit sculpture that, in his view, was being churned out in an assembly-line fashion to make money from its sale to tourists, and called for a return to the “soul” of the art form. As a prolific writer, he contributed to many learned journals, and in the 1950s he produced sixty-nine Art in Action shows for the CBC.