A decade ago, artist Susan Swartz was diagnosed with mercury poisoning from eating fish from contaminated waters. Six years ago, she contracted Lyme disease.

In both instances, Swartz, who splits her time between Martha’s Vineyard and Park City, nearly died, but they also gave her a new perspective about her art.

“My paintings have become more bold as a result of those experiences,” Swartz told The Park Record during an interview. “In this world where commerce and technology seem to influence so many people, I think I want my message to take on the real beauty that is in our natural surroundings. If any of my paintings take people away from those other distractions, even for a few minutes, then they are succeeding in conveying what God gave us naturally.”

Swartz’s paintings will have the chance to reach new audiences when the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., honors the artist with a special exhibit, “Susan Swartz: Seasons of the Soul.”

The exhibit will run June 17 through Oct. 2

“This is really a big deal for me and I’m so excited,” Swartz said. “The museum staff has been talking to me for about a year and half. I got word of a commitment date two days before Christmas last year and what a nice Christmas present for me.”

Swartz said the NMWA, founded by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, was the first organization to give equal footing to female artists.

“I can’t think of any organization that has done more for women artists in our country than NMWA,” she said. “Ever since I attended a function years ago, I have dreamed about my work hanging there, so it is an incredible privilege, now, to show my works at this institution.”

The exhibit will feature 13 compositions, all of which show her keen eye for the environment, which has developed over the past 40 years.

“I am in what I would call my impressionist/expressionist stage right now,” Swartz explained. “I feel like I’ve gone trough my portraits, my small animals my flower stage and my barn stage and my scuba-diving stage. Now I’m completely into nature.

“In the summer I’m on the East Coast and do a lot of water scenes with water lilies and that sort of stuff,” she said. “When I come back to Park City, I paint my trees and landscapes again.”

Having recovered from illnesses that were environmental in origin, Swartz became an environmental activist and she believes her art is the perfect vehicle to spread those messages.

“Everyone has a talent that I think they can apply to a greater good,” Swartz said. “I think I’m most happy when my work inspires others to make a difference in our environment.”

However, she knows that her art is only part of the awareness process, so she also gets physically involved with organizations such as the environmental film production company Impact Partners and Robert F. Kennedy’s Waterkeeper Alliance.

“My husband and I co-produced a couple of documentary films with Impact Partners,” she said. “One deals with mercury poisoning (‘Mercury Rising’) and another with Lyme disease (‘Under Our Skin’).”

Impact Partners also premiered three films at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Lynn Hershan Leeson’s “!Women Art Revolution,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s “Miss Representation” and Tiffany Shlain’s “Connected: An Autobiography About Love, Death and Technology.”

Swartz has also worked with conservationist Jane Goodall, who spoke at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City in 2008.

To Swartz, art and activism go hand in hand.

“I’m trying to paint what God created and that, to me, gets me involved with taking care of the environment,” she said. “One mirrors the other, and it’s all of us giving back to something.

“My goal is to get people to look at the world around us and see what they can do to fix it.”

Swartz discovered her painting talent early and studied at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She also taught high school art classes.

“I worked hard to develop the best technique to express myself, since I come from a family of artists and musicians,” Swartz said. “I know you have to build a canvas up when doing portraits. You have to start with the blues and the purples before adding the fleshtones. So I do a lot of painting and glazing so I can have real depth through my art.”

Early in her career, Swartz saw how judges’ responses began to influence what she painted. So she stopped entering juried competitions.

“At that point I knew that I needed to paint for myself if I wanted to grow as an artist,” she said. “I came to feel most comfortable with myself conveying the beauty of nature.”

Today, her art is a direct reflection of her appreciation for and concerns about the environment.

“Mankind’s carelessness with the natural world has had a very personal effect on my health,” she said. “I paint now from a place of spiritual reverence for the natural world and a determination to see it cleaned up and protected.”

That’s why she always finishes her paintings with her signature “GTG,” which means “Glory to God.”

“While I sign my own name in the paintings, I want the credit for both the subject and the ability to go to their rightful creator,” she said.

For more information about “Susan Swartz: Seasons of the Soul,” visit www.nmwa.org.