Bo Bartlett

Bartlett’s parents, Opal and Bill Bartlett (James William Bartlett Jr.), were from Columbus. His father was a woodworker and furniture designer, and his mother was a medical librarian. Bartlett has one sister, Sandy Scarborough. The art collection belonging to Sandy and her husband Otis, the Scarborough Collection, makes up a large part of the works on view at the Bo Bartlett Center. Bartlett also had one brother, Chuck, who died from cancer in 1988. Bartlett is the father of three sons from his first marriage, Will, Man, and Eliot. The youngest, Eliot, died in 2014 at the age of 27. Family is very meaningful for Bartlett, and he has depicted family members in his paintings throughout his life.

Bartlett’s experience in Florence and his exposure to the paintings of the Italian Renaissance Masters set him on a course to explore figurative painting. Upon his return to the United States, Bartlett studied at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and then the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He received a Certificate of Fine Art from PAFA in 1980. During this period, he studied anatomy at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, mirroring the approach of the 19th century realist painter, Thomas Eakins. During his time in Pennsylvania, Bartlett apprenticed under Nelson Shanks. Bartlett then went on to study liberal arts at the University of Pennsylvania from 1980 to 1981. In 1986, Bartlett received a Certificate in Filmmaking from New York University. The influence of film is apparent in Bartlett’s work. Cinematic scale, lighting, and narrative staging are important elements throughout his career.

Bartlett’s experience in filmmaking led him to connect with Betsy Wyeth in 1992, to embark upon a film about the life and work of her husband, Andrew Wyeth. The film collaboration marked the beginning of Bartlett's relationship with Wyeth as a lifelong friend. Snow Hill was completed in 1995. The connection between Bartlett and the Wyeths was formed during a period in which Bartlett was questioning his path as an artist, after several bad reviews by prominent New York critics. Andrew and Betsy Wyeth encouraged Bartlett in his work, and to continue to paint what he knows. Bartlett recalls, “I may have learned “how” to paint somewhere else, but I learned “why” to paint in Chadds Ford with Andrew Wyeth.” Bartlett traveled with the Wyeths to Maine, where they had several islands on which they lived and worked. In 1998 Bartlett purchased Wheaton Island, Maine, where he now lives and works every summer.

While Bartlett’s work was at times unfashionable, he was undeterred in his vision. Bartlett is guided in his work by a quote by Robertson Davies, “Let your root feed your crown.” To Bartlett this means to paint your life, to be true to your temperament in order to maintain truth and originality throughout one’s work. Bartlett’s multilayered works are both deeply personal and responding to issues of the day. For all of the troubling issues of the day from politics to climate change, Bartlett remains hopeful for the country and the world. Bartlett firmly believes that art brings people together, both in empowering artists and in bridging gaps between viewers with different worldviews.

Bartlett’s work can be found in private collections, public collections, and galleries throughout the United States. These include the Denver Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Morris Museum of Art, the Mennello Museum of American Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Frye Art Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum, Greenville County Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The Bo Bartlett Center houses more than 300 paintings and drawings as well as the complete archive of sketch books, correspondence, journals, recordings, photographs, artistic notes, memorabilia, objects and objects d’art relevant to the production of Bartlett’s work. A rotating exhibitions gallery features the work of visiting American artists of national and international acclaim who also teach master classes.

Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are inspired by American Realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell, and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America's land and people to depict the beauty he finds in everyday life. He paints in the Grand Manner of academic painting of the 18th and 19th centuries, integrating figure painting, portraiture, landscape, and still life into his scenes. Bartlett also references the religious iconography and art history throughout his work.

The Bo Bartlett Center opened in January 2018, as part of the Corn Center for Visual Arts at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. The center is an 18,425 square foot interactive gallery space, studio space, and teaching space designed by Tom Kundig.

The American, 82 x 100 inches, oil on linen, 2016, Mennello Museum, Orlando, FL. The American depicts a suited white man with a shotgun, defending an empty suburban street against and unknown threat, raising questions about gun control and power.

Dominion, 82 x 100 inches, oil on linen, 2016, courtesy Miles McEnery Gallery. Dominion references the icon of global warming – the polar bear, roaring defiantly on a shrinking iceberg.

While depicted in a grand, narrative style, the stories Bartlett tells are open-ended. They celebrate the commonplace and personal. The scenes Bartlett depicts are familiar – children dressed up on Halloween, two young women riding a bike, a man rowing on a sunny day – yet there is “an oddity about his works that creates psychological pause within the viewer.” The uncanny nature, the familiar yet dreamlike quality of Bartlett’s work shows the influence of Surrealists such as Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Giorgio De Chirico. Bartlett often creates scenes that are highly improbable, but not entirely impossible. His works challenge notions of objective reality, allowing viewers to fill in narrative mysteries with their own ideas and experiences.

A Miraculous Outcome, 76 x 90 inches, oil on linen, 2008, private collection. This painting is a self-portrait of Bartlett and his wife, Betsy Eby, embracing each other after a car accident. The artist’s white shirt and Eby’s black dress unite to create a yin yang relationship.

Leviathan, 188 x 137 inches, oil on linen, 2000, private collection, on loan to the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA. Leviathan tells the story of Jonah and the whale in a dreamlike, modern time.

Dreamland, 84 x 100 inches, oil on linen, 1998, private collection, Bryn Mawr, PA. Dreamland features an unlikely combination of characters, as though thrown together from different stories. The characters are inspired by Bartlett’s Tarot Card series. The models for the painting are Bartlett’s friends and family, featuring Bartlett himself as The Fool.

Lifeboat, 80 x 100 inches, oil on linen, 1998, private collection, on loan to the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA. Lifeboat is inspired by Winlow Homer’s The Fog Warning. The man in the rowboat is dressed casually and the day is bright, yet he is surrounded by threats including a shark in the water and a large crashing wave.

Self Portrait, 31 x 25 inches, oil on panel, 1996, private collection, on loan to the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia. Self Portrait was painted in Bartlett’s studio in Swedesburg, Pennsylvania.

Homecoming, 92 x 100 inches, oil on linen, 1995, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus GA. Homecoming depicts a homecoming queen and her court, in front of a celebratory bonfire that rages a little too large, creating tension between a familiar scene of young love and a power that can quickly turn dangerous.

Snow Hill was completed in 1995 and went on to receive the CINE Golden Eagle Award, the Gold Apple Award from the National Educational Media Network Awards, Best Documentary from Hot Springs DFF, Best Biography from CINDY Awards, and Best Documentary from Philadelphia FVF. Bartlett went on to co-direct SEE: An Art Road Trip with Betsy Eby. He also directed Helga a documentary short about Andrew Wyeth’s muse and model, and Things Don’t Stay Fixed.

Young Life, 78 x 108 inches, oil on linen, 1994, private collection on loan to Ogden Museum, New Orleans, LA. Young Life is a play on the painting, American Gothic, by Grant Wood. The scene is depicts a young American family, posing after a successful hunt. There is a darker undercurrent in the painting found in the mud splattered over the truck, the blood on the man’s pants, and the young boy mimicking the pose of the rifle-armed man.

Homeland, 134 x 204 inches, oil on linen, 1994, McCormick Place, Chicago. Homeland references several historical paintings including Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Raft of the Medusa and Liberty Leading the People. Inspired by the Allied liberation of Europe, Homeland depicts a large group of people in late afternoon light, traveling back to homes they have been exiled from.

Hiroshima, 134 x 204 inches, oil on linen, 1994, private collection, on loan to the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA. This painting depicts rural Hiroshima on the morning just before the atomic bombing. It is at once serene and charged with the knowledge of the destruction on the horizon.

The Bride, 80 x 100 inches, oil on linen, 1994, private collection, Maine. The Bride depicts a stirring and mysterious scene of an unconscious groom and a half-clad bride before a Caravaggio-esque mural of Abraham and Isaac.

God, 120 x 168 inches, oil on linen, 1990, private collection, Saudi Arabia. God was painted in Bartlett’s studio in Philadelphia over the course of half a year. While working on the painting, Bartlett traveled the country. The wide-open expanses of the West and Midwest inspired the patchwork quilt and the open sky.

Following a long legacy of realist painters, Bartlett embarked on his career in the 1970s, at a time when the Art World embraced abstraction, conceptual art, and Minimalism. Bartlett and his realist contemporaries, including Vincent Desiderio, Mark Tansey, and later John Currin, were creating representational work at a time when critics often dismissed figurative painting as conservative and outdated.

Bo Bartlett (born December 29, 1955 in Columbus, Georgia) is an American Realist painter working in Columbus, Georgia and Wheaton Island, Maine.

Bo Bartlett was born James William Bartlett III on December 29, 1955 in Columbus, Georgia. At the age of 18 he traveled to Florence, Italy where he studied mural painting under the American expatriate, Ben Long. In 1974 he returned to the United States and married. He moved to Philadelphia in 1975. In 2004, Bartlett traveled around the world before moving to Seattle, Washington, in 2005. During his time in the Pacific Northwest, Bartlett met artist Betsy Eby, and the two were married on Wheaton Island in 2007. Bartlett and Eby currently live and paint on Wheaton Island, Maine in summer, and in Bartlett’s hometown of Columbus, Georgia in the winter. In 2018 they opened the Bo Bartlett Center, an 18,425 square foot interactive gallery space at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia.