Here’s an opportunity to own Endless Glow II, a Susan Swartz Original Acrylic on Linen painting, while supporting Waterkeeper Alliance, the world’s largest and fastest growing clean water advocacy group. Susan, a longtime proponent of eliminating toxins from our rivers and oceans, is proud to join this amazing group of artists and activists in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act.

Susan and her husband, Jim, are co-founders of Impact Partners, a philanthropic venture organization that supports independent films that address pressing social issues. Over the years, films they have supported have gone onto screen at major festivals all over the planet and to win significant accolades, including Academy Awards.

Two films supported by Susan and Jim Swartz and the Impact Partners film fund have leapt beyond the festival circuit and into public audience this season:

Monthly throughout the exhibition of Susan’s Seasons of the Soul at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), the museum is presenting a documentary film series titled Linking Environment, Healing and Creativity. Already this summer, two important films have screened: The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg and A Healthy Baby Girl.

As an environmental and humanitarian activist, Susan knows that documentary film can be one of the most powerful mediums for shedding light on pressing social issues. That’s why Susan and her husband, Jim, are founding members of Impact Partners, a unique organization that brings together filmmakers and investors. In recent years, Impact Partners has helped fund important and award-winning films like The Cove, An Inconvenient Truth, The Garden and Freeheld.

In the early 1970's, a mysterious illness was discovered among children living around the town of Lyme, CT. What was first diagnosed as isolated cases of juvenile arthritis, eventually became known as Lyme disease, one of the most misunderstood and controversial illnesses of our time.

To learn more about mercury contamination, Susan highly recommends Diagnosis, Mercury: Money, Politics & Poison, by physician Jane M. Hightower. In the book, Dr. Hightower retraces her investigation into the modern prevalence of mercury poisoning, revealing how political calculations, dubious studies, and industry lobbyists endanger our health. While mercury is a naturally occurring element, she learns there’s much that is unnatural about this poison’s prevalence in our seafood. Dr. Hightower’s tenacious inquiry sheds light on a system in which, too often, money trumps good science and responsible government. Susan suggests that Diagnosis: Mercury should be required reading for everyone who cares about their health.

Did you know that over 70% of the toxic mercury in our environment is the result of industrial activities and human pollution? Mercury accumulates in the atmosphere and makes its way up the marine food chain, ultimately leading to dangerously high concentrations of the metal in the species of fish favored by many humans, like tuna, swordfish and mackerel. In humans, mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that at elevated levels may lead to cancer, slow growth, brain, and kidney damage. After becoming critically ill with mercury poisoning a decade ago, Susan emerged determined to shed light on this environmental and human health catastrophe. Together with her husband, Jim, and their filmmaking partners, Susan executive produced the impactful film Mercury Rising.