HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL COMMENDS SUSAN SWARTZ’S “SPIRITUAL LENS”
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.”
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, please visit hds.harvard.edu.