American artist Susan Swartz is being shown for the first time in London with a special exhibition of BREATH OF NATURE paintings. Susan has been recognized for being both a passionate abstract painter and ardent Environmental Campaigner. Named as an official Environmental Artist of the Salt Lake City Olympics, Susan Swartz was challenged over a ten year period with two environmentally-bred illnesses - Mercury Poison and Lyme Disease which left her at times unable to hold a paint brush. She has since changed her life and focus and her paintings have become more bold and impasssioned as she has come to support individuals and organizations who champion the protection of our environment. On November 7th, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, and Louie Psihoyos, the Academy Award winning documentary film director who is Executive Dierctor of the Oceanic Preservation Society will join Susan at The Belgravia Gallery to talk about "A Shared Passion For Environmental Campaigning."

Whether it be from a literary or an artistic angle, both poet Henrietta Cordelia Ray and artist Susan Swartz seek to better understand natural waters by capturing their magnificence.

Patrick Phillips writes of Susan Swartz in the Mid Summer 2012 issue of Martha’s Vineyard Art & Ideas.

Susan was so moved by a sobering New York Times article, The Ecology of Disease, that she feels compelled to share it. The premise of the article is that human alterations of nature unleash infectious disease. “As someone who has long struggled with the negative impacts of environmentally-bred illnesses,” begins Susan. “I have long believed that human disease is essentially an environmental issue.”

For those of you who might be on Long Island, Susan suggests attending the special screening of the Impact Partners film DETROPIA, hosted by Alec Baldwin, Saturday, July 21. This is part of a series of special screenings over the summer sponsored by the Hamptons Film Festival at East Hampton's Guild Hall. DETROPIA won the Editing Award at Sundance this year. It will have a limited theatrical release this Fall, and will premier on PBS in 2013.

Through her continuing efforts to raise awareness about environmental toxins and healthy, mindful living, Susan has been working on several fronts with Dr. Mark Hyman, author of The Blood Sugar Solution.

The latest is their support of Sugar Babies, a documentary film by Jenny Mackenzie (Kick Like a Girl) about diabetes, a disease that is now threatening our youngest generation. Watch the trailer for this powerful look at our most preventable of epidemics.

As part of the year long celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act, today June 21st is Fishable Waters Action Day. Local Waterkeeper Alliance groups, fisherman and anyone interested in the health of their local waterways are fishing, boating or visiting their favorite water spot today. Susan, a longtime supporter of the work of Waterkeeper, urges everyone to join her in visiting their local stream, river, lake or ocean today to enjoy and observe its health.

June 22nd is officially the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere, a time when Susan travels down from her winter studio — perched at 8,500 feet elevation in Utah’s mountains — to her sea level summer studio off the coast of New England. Auspiciously, Susan's summer in Martha's Vineyard begins this year with a match race. The most exciting part of the race? Susan's husband, a seasoned competitive sailor, will be at the helm of his TP52 racing yacht, Vesper.

Each spring, the Harvard Divinity School (HDS), of which Susan is a member of the Dean's Council, hosts a Leadership Day devoted to thinking through global issues about faith and religion.

This year, Susan was honored to say a few words about retiring dean, William A. “Bill” Graham. “Bill is one of the most open and warm people that I have ever known,” remarked Susan. “He [helped] me to understand how my art flowed from my spiritual self, connecting me with the work of this great institution and the progression of religious expression through art over time.”

May is National Lyme Disease Awareness Month, and June is often the month when infected ticks are most prevalent in much of the United States. This past May offered Susan an opportunity to reflect on a very important film for which she her husband, Jim, served as executive producers over four years ago.

Under Our Skin premiered in May 2008 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and has racked up over 90,000 ratings on Netflix to date. A few weeks ago, Dr. Phil even devoted an entire program to chronic Lyme (video below), using several minutes of footage from Under Our Skin.

Yes, it really is an English year for Susan! In choosing the recent paintings for their Susan Swartz November exhibition, Belgravia Gallery loves Transition 17 60 x 60. It's still spring in the mountains, and this painting reminds Susan of the beautiful poem from 1967 by the great English poet Philip Larkin.

It’s the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Year and Susan is celebrating in her own special sort of painterly way…with her London exhibition at Belgravia Gallery in November!

Ladies: do you ever have trouble enticing your man into an art gallery or museum? Well Susan has a show for him…and you! Just roaring into Salt Lake City at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts is Speed: The Art of the Performance Automobile.

An Impact Partners production, Sofia’s Last Ambulance, a film by Bulgarian born Ilian Metev, has won the France 4 Visionary Award at the Cannes Film Festival International Critics’ Week.

Before settling into her summer painting season in Martha's Vineyard, Susan traveled to the Amazon this spring. The Amazon Basin is a place palpably alive, and Susan could not just see and hear, but also feel the air pulsing with vitality there. During her travels, painterly images kept coming into her mind—bright colors and rich brushstrokes. Many years ago Susan was introduced to the work of another woman painter who she very much admires, British painter named Margaret Mee. Mee spent quite a bit of time painting in the Amazon in the middle part of the 20th century. “I see a lot of parallels between Margaret’s life and my own,” explains Susan. “Like me, she was an environmental activist and was plagued by environmental health problems. Also like me, she was a fiercely determined woman who painted her entire life.”

With a busy summer of painting ahead of her, Susan is preparing for her autumn jaunt across the pond. From November 5th to 24th 2012, a collection of Susan’s recent paintings will be on display at Belgravia Gallery in the heart of London’s art district, near Piccadilly. One of London’s most respected galleries, Belgravia has exhibited works from such notable artists as Picasso, Rembrandt, Warhol, Robert Indiana, Nelson Mandela, Paul Chizik and now … Susan!

While in Washington DC last month, Susan was delighted to visit the once-in-lifetime exhibition Colorful Realm: Japanese Bird-and-Flower Paintings by Itō Jakuchū (1716-1800.) Celebrating the centennial of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to the nation’s capital, this exhibition featured one of Japan’s most renowned cultural treasures, the extraordinary set of 30 paintings on silk scrolls by Itō Jakuchū. Painted between 1757 and 1766 and donated by the painter to the Zen monastery Shōkokuji in Kyoto, the scrolls entered the Imperial Household in the 1889 where they were displayed in part on special Imperial occasions.