After months of anticipation and years of preparation, Susan’s solo exhibit, seasons of the soul opened in Washington, D.C. at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) on June 17, 2011. The exhibit, which features 13 of Susan’s colorful, oversized canvases, will run through October 2, as part of a celebration in honor of the museum’s 25th anniversary.

ARTFIX Daily, one of the web’s most widely read art news publications, recently featured Susan in a substantial article that focused on her upcoming solo exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Earlier in the month, the publication offered a positive review of Susan’s work at Art Sarasota, and now this five-page feature article is incredibly supportive.

Are you ready for the big news? We’re so excited to tell you that we can’t hold it in any longer: Susan is being honored with a special solo exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C.

What an incredible start to the New Year! First, three films that Susan helped produce premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival to great reviews. Before the credits finished rolling, Susan’s first solo shows in Florida opened at Art Palm Beach and Art Sarasota.

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.

Susan is super excited to have been invited for her first solo show in Florida, at the prestigious annual Art Palm Beach, scheduled for January 20 – 24, 2011. Susan will be showing a remarkable collection of largely abstract landscapes that have been described as “a contemporary prayer for future generations that will inherit the world in which we live.”

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.

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!

Where has the summer gone? In Susan’s case, it went directly onto her canvases in the form of new paintings.

Great news! Susan is profiled in a feature article and photo story of the August 2010 issue of Jo Lee Magazine, an international publication dedicated to unexpected intellectual content, philanthropy and lifestyle.

Susan recently completed an original commission for the new Zion’s Bank Financial Center in Provo, Utah. A longtime supporter of Susan’s work, Zion’s Bank dedicated the new eight-story building in May 2010, at which point the painting was revealed to the public.

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.

Susan’s recent solo exhibition at the Springville Museum of Art brings to mind her first showing of the Natural Revelations exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) in 2008. Wrote UMFA museum director, David Dee: “While grounded in the real world of nature, Susan Swartz’s work also connects us to the pure energy and devotion to color that have characterized abstract art from the mid twentieth century.”

Following the success of Susan’s January 2010 solo exhibition at Utah’s oldest museum for the fine arts, the Springville Museum of Art, museum director, Vern Swanson, purchased one of the paintings for its permanent collection. “Amazing Grace” is a large piece—six feet by six feet—done in acrylic on linen. The painting depicts the crimson blaze of a maple forest, basking in the warm complacency of an autumn evening.

Susan Swartz creates vibrant landscape paintings from her studio in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. An official artist of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, she is well known to public and private collectors alike, and just wrapped a solo exhibition at the Springville Museum of Fine Arts in Utah. There is an underlying energy and tension to Susan’s work that hints of her complex relationship with the natural environment. “Mankind’s carelessness with the natural world has had a very personal effect on me,” she explains. “Twice I have struggled environmentally caused illnesses.”