Untitled 012

Susan has been painting furiously in preparation for her December 8-11 exhibition at The Carlyle Hotel in New York City, as well as the ArtPalm Beach show in early 2012. At the same time Susan’s creating her well-known landscapes, she’s been quietly working away on a separate body of work.

Even more abstract than the abstract expressionist work Susan is best known for, these smaller paintings comprise a new Untitled Series. Explains Susan:

I use lots of glazes and many of layers of paint in my work, so there are many times when I am waiting for something to dry. I can’t just sit and wait—my hands need to keep moving—and often I have a visual idea or thought that may not be right for the piece I am in the midst of. So, I experiment on a separate canvas in a smaller scale—with color combinations, techniques, a feeling. Often the work is just a study, but sometimes I love the result. Recently, I’ve loved several of these truly abstract works, and they’ve grown into my Untitled Series.

Visit Susan’s updated Gallery.

The current issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin features a long article by William A. Graham, Dean at HDS and respected Harvard professor and scholar. In “Reading the ‘Book of Nature’,” Graham uses the collection of paintings in Susan’s book, Natural Revelations, to explore the “venerable tradition of artists who find in nature their prime window on the divine.”

"Afterglow" 36 x 36

Coupled with reprints of Susan’s paintings, Graham’s prose takes readers from Plotinus, to the Qur’an, to Ralph Waldo Emerson, all the while noting the links between art, religion and nature. Writes Graham:

Swartz’ electrifying paintings focus in particular on the wonders and the magnificence [of nature]—an emphasis that echoes the oldest spiritual and aesthetic intuitions of our species. Her art radiates the conviction that nature reveals that which transcends our physical universe and our fragile experience as mortal beings in a perilous passage through a world vastly larger than ourselves or even our imagining.

This article was first published in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Summer/Autumn 2011, Volume 39, Numbers 3 & 4. If you’d like read Graham’s complete article, Click here.

“There is a harmony in
autumn, and a
lustre in its sky,
Which through the
summer is not heardor seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been.

-PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Autumn may be Susan’s favorite season to paint in the mountains. The bright, brisk mornings and warm Indian Summer afternoons just beg for walks through the forest—walks that in Susan’s case, provide gratitude for Nature’s divine beauty and inspire a thousand new brush strokes with each step. The rust-colored maple leaves that carpet the trails and the shock of golden aspens against the hillside will surely find their way onto Susan’s canvas. Be sure to get outside and let the beauty of the season inspire your own creativity!