A Personal Path
Magic Of Colors and Light Premier in Salzburg
By Salzburgerin
The American painter, Susan Swartz, shows a selection of her works in the Collegiate Church Salzburg for the first time in Austria. Between May 30 and July 4 2014, the Salzburg Foundation and Foundation for Art and Culture Bonn, in cooperation with the Catholic University Parish /Unipfarre, realize for the first time an exhibition at the Collegiate Church, in the heart of Salzburg’s Old Town. The American art activist, Susan Swartz, was invited to present a selection of her works in Salzburg. Susan Swartz is dedicated to painting abstract, extremely colorful landscapes, and the works in acrylic have a strong connection to nature, but also demonstrate a meditative, spiritual character. The radiation emanating from the works, the magic of color and light, go with the newly restored, bright, Baroque Kollegienkirche, a strong symbiosis, an effect difficult for the viewer to escape. The artist’s creative spirit is fed directly by nature, by the beauty of the immediate surroundings of her two residences in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, which is located on the sea, and in the impressive Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Her deep belief in God, the creator of the universe, of nature and man, strengthens her work as an artist. She says: “If God is the creator, all I have to do is interpret. ”Susan Swartz’s artistic work has been recognized in several solo exhibitions: for example, in2011 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC; in 2010 at the Springville Museum of Art in Springville, Utah; and in 2008 at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City. Swartz is represented with in the permanent collections of these museums and in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. In 2002, Swartz was awarded the Utah Governor’s Mansion Award. In 2005, her work was published alongside those of artists of the Wasatch Mountain School such as Maynard Dixon, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran in the Gibbs Smith anthology Painters of the Wasatch Mountains. In the same year she received the Honorary Award of the Harvard Divinity School for her art work, which establishes a connection between art and faith.
At the 2002 Winter Olympics Swartz was named the official landscape painter. Her commissioned work Soldier Hollow was also seen in the exhibition “Painters of the Wasatch Mountains” at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah. Due to her decades of struggle against mercury poisoning and Lyme disease she has changed a lot as an artist and activist. She is actively involved in environmental campaigns against water and air pollution. She also supports the vision and production of documentary films by Impact Partners, a film promotion society, of which she is a founding member. Impact Partners aims to show social and ecological injustice. One of their films won the Oscar for the best documentary, three more have been nominated for an Oscar, one of which was awarded at the Sundance Film Festival. Swartz is a member of the Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, a member of the Dean’s Council at the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) and is Co-Chair of an HDS Campaign. In addition, she is a cofounder of The Christian Center of Park City and sits on the board of the Utah Film Center.