It is with great sadness that I share the news of the passing of my family member, best friend and business manager, Karen Shah. Many of you who frequent my website or do work with my Studio knew her on a personal level, but there’s no doubt in my mind, even if you never spoke with her or met her, all who share my art are in some way touched by Karen’s presence.

Susan Swartz is an artist on a journey, her body of work tells a story – it quietly whispers of her innermost inspirations to those who take the time to simply be with each painting. Over the course of her career, Susan has explored realism, impressionism, expressionism and has recently arrived at a more abstract resting place, her work now leaves more open to interpretation than ever before.

Anytime a new gallery opens its doors, an unspoken invitation is issued to whet our palates on the delightful unknown. Beckoning to seasoned art collectors as well as those venturing into the art world for the first time, Modern West Fine Art seeks to further define the landscape of contemporary Western art and perhaps give us a glimpse of the future.

At the height of the Park City ski season, nestled in the ambient lower ballroom of the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Deer Valley, the Kimball Art Center presents a salon which dances with light and color. Featuring a variety of work that speaks to every taste, the Winter Art Salon plays host to pieces by Susan Swartz, Dale Chihuly, Linda Lee Johnson, Alexandra Hart, Nelson Mandela and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales from February 21-23, 2014.

Susan has been painting prolifically and earnestly, compelled by some unseen urge to create. Even as her work has evolved over the past few years from expressionism into something more modern and abstract, she usually structures her paintings with form and color.

Not so with one of her most recent series. Contemplation constitutes a collection of works that allow Susan to find respite from the riotous colors and intentional forms of her other collections.

Today Zions Bank opens their new Idaho Headquarters in Boise. The top floor will known as the "Founders Room" and will feature Susan Swartz's two new works, Idaho Majesty I and II each 48x85, in addition to the amazing Boise vistas.

Susan has long been an impassioned defender of human rights. Over the past decade, she and her husband, Jim, have helped produce important films that seek to shed light on injustice, like Born Into Brothels, which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Documentary and Anita: Speaking Truth to Power, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

With daylight savings suddenly behind us, the days of growing darkness are here. The paradox of light and shadow brings necessary balance, and not only in a painting. As an artist, Susan embraces this darkness as a ballast for the brightness of spring. And, she knows that in any season, the natural world offers both beauty and terror, both life and death, both light and dark, all combined in a rich mash.

In addition to her Water Study and Untitled series, Susan has been moving toward abstraction with a third painting series wholly distinct from the others. Now totaling six paintings in all, the Landscape of Resonances series takes the natural world and distills it to its essences: light, heat, form, color.

The most recent painting in Susan’s abstract Water Study series, Water Study 005 pushes viewers out of their comfort zone and upends the color story we associate with water: clear blues and milky greens. Instead, Susan gives us the opposite end of the color spectrum—hues that could be interpreted as the last coral traces of a peaceful sunset reflected on the ocean, or as a corrosive, clogged and wholly unnatural waterway.

"For Susan Swartz's many fans in Park City, it has been thrilling to watch her heady ascent from local artist in the early 1990s to national and international star..." Thus begins Park City Magazine's feature of Susan in their Summer/Fall 2013 issue just out today. Written by Wendy Lavitt, "True Colors" details much of Susan's artistic journey since moving to Utah.

While Susan has fully embraced abstract painting only for the past few years, there was foreshadowing of a major artistic revolution in some of her earlier work, like Exploding Sky from 2008 or even Calm Day from 2009.

Several years ago, while waiting for the paint to dry on her impressionist work, Susan began experimenting with the abstract. In the time since, when Susan stands in front of a new canvas with a brush in hand, what has increasingly emerged are true abstracts, bold and full of impact. One of her recent works, the 24×30 Trees of Gold, is being featured in ABSTRACT an exhibition at London’s revered Belgravia Gallery.

Susan is an artist who not only sees, but also relishes the contrasts of nature. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in her inspiration itself. For large portions of the year, she paints from her mountaintop studio in Utah, surrounded by the repetitive linear forms of bare aspen trunks and the craggy peaks of the high desert. There’s a sharpness to Susan’s pieces created in the West.

As a classically trained painter, Susan had certainly been exposed to the Pre-Raphaelites, but the Tate exhibition presented them in a new light, as an avant-garde movement. She was especially moved by the vivid natural imagery that appears in Pre-Raphaelite subjects, and by the art movement’s process of intensely looking at nature, which resulted in a new, distinctively modern style.

As the bright blooms of spring begin, one hue finally dominates the landscape around Susan’s studio in the Utah mountains: green. Susan is well accustomed to this annual shock of strong alpine color and has incorporated summer’s shade into many of her earlier works. Even so, a lifetime of mountain springs and ocean summers could not have prepared her for the particular and verdant hues of green that are native to Ireland.

Susan was honored to support the Divinity School at Harvard University by sponsoring the February 28th panel about the barriers facing women hoping to work within Shari’a law courts. Titled “Women’s Rights in a Man’s World,” the panel featured Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first female judge in a Palestinian Shari’a court, as well as several other notable female law leaders.

As residents of one of the healthiest counties in the nation, it can be easy for Susan’s Park City neighbors to forget that a true health crisis — an epidemic of obesity and related diseases is rolling across the nation. But, as someone who has struggled for years with the effects of chronic illness, Susan places enormous weight and value on holistic health.