Biography

Bo Bartlett - Artists - Dowling Walsh

BO BARTLETT (b. 1955, Columbus, GA) received his Certificate of Fine Arts in 1981 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a Certificate of Filmmaking from New York University in 1986.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Cirque De La Vie,” Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Old Lyme, CT; “Earthly Matters,” Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; traveled to MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL; and The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT; “Forty Years of Drawing,” The Florence Academy of Art, Jersey City, NJ; “Paintings and Works on Paper,” Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “Retrospective,” The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; “Paintings from the Outpost,” Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME; “Bo Bartlett: American Artist,” The Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL; Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY; and the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA.

Recent group exhibitions include “Big Stories,” Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; “Highlighting Contemporary Art in Georgia: Picture This,” Lyndon House Art Center, Athens, GA; “COMPETERE,” The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; “Mirror/Mirror: American Self-Portraits in the Expanded Field,” The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; “Extra Ordinary, Magic Mystery, and Imagination in American Realism,” Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; “Really.” (curated by Inka Essenhigh & Ryan McGinness), Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “A Telling Instinct: John James Audubon and Contemporary Art,” Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; “Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby,” Ithan Substation No. 1, Villanova, PA; and “South Arts 2019 Southern Prize and State Fellows,” 701 Center for Contemporary Art, Columbia, SC.

Bo Bartlett - Artists - Dowling Walsh

His work is included in the collections of the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, PA; Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; Carpenters Union Hall, Washington, D.C.; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA; Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR; Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, PA; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; La Salle University Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS; McCormick Place Metropolis Pier and Exposition Authority, South Hall, Chicago, IL; Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL; and the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA.

Bartlett is the recipient of the South Arts Fellowship, South Arts, Atlanta, GA; Atelier Focus Fellowship, Chattahoochee Hills, GA; 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia, PA; Museum Merit Award, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA; Museum Merit Award, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Benjamin Lanard Memorial Award, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Eleanor S. Gray Prize for Still Life, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; William Emlen Cresson Traveling Scholarship, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Thouron Prize, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Cecilia Beaux Memorial Portrait Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Charles Toppan Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, and the Packard Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

The artist lives and works in Columbus, GA and Wheaton Island, ME.

Review

Bo Bartlett - Artists - Dowling Walsh

"Bo Bartlett is very American. He’s fresh, he’s gifted, and he’s what we need in this country. Bo is one of the very few I feel this strongly about."

– Andrew Wyeth

"Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary.

Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged. He pushes the boundaries of the realist tradition with his multilayered imagery. Life, death, passage, memory, and confrontation coexist easily in his world. Family and friends are the cast of characters that appear in his dreamlike narrative works. Although the scenes are set around his childhood home in Georgia, his island summer home in Maine, his home in Pennsylvania or the surroundings of his studio and residence in Washington state, they represent a deeper, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home."

– Tom Butler, excerpt from the book Bo Bartlett, Heartland

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