Susan Swartz explores landscapes through potent colors and richly layered abstract paintings. With her evocation of coastal splendor and mountain drama, Swartz follows in the tradition of the great German painters, 19th century Romantic sage Caspar David Friedrich, and 20th century icon Gerhard Richter. She is inspired by the intersection of art, nature and spirituality.
Susan Swartz's distinctive style has been recognized with solo exhibitions at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)Museum in Beijing, China; the Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis, California; the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Hungary ; the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, Germany; the Kollegienkirche in Salzburg, Austria; the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C; the Springville Museum of Art in Springville, Utah; and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her works are in the public and private collections including the Agnes Gund Collection, the permanent collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the Springville Museum of Art; the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; the International Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland; and the CAFA Museum in Beijing, China.
Swartz's work is also on display inside the United States Embassies in New Zealand, Hungary, and China via the Art in Embassies program. In 2005, Swartz was published in the Gibbs Smith collectors book Painters of the Wasatch Mountains along side Wasatch Mountain School artists Maynard Dixon, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. The same year she was honored by the Harvard Divinity School for a career that continues to blend artistry and faith. Swartz was the Official Olympic Environmental Artist for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. The underlying energy and tension to Swartz's work hints of her complex relationship with the natural world. Her decade long struggle with mercury poisoning and Lyme disease transformed her as an artist and as a citizen. She now works from a place of impassioned reverence for the earth, and of fierce determination to inform and educate.