Terrible things happen. Seemingly again and again. On micro and macro scales. They can feel intractable and insurmountable. So much of history is just a record of things going wrong. Rick Bartow (1946 to 2016) observed and experienced tragedies throughout his life. The art and music he made over many decades emphasized how efforts can still be taken to return to a balanced position, but it is a ceaseless endeavor.

 

A professionally trained artist, Bartow lived and worked on the Oregon coast. A member of the Wiyot Tribe, he drew from personal experiences, cultural encounters, global myths, and especially indigenous transformation narratives to explore his multifaceted identity, his tribal and personal traumas. A Vietnam veteran, Bartow returned with PTSD, along with other health and addiction issues.  Art became an essential act to heal himself and the world, to offer signposts to others. Hybrid human-animal figures, cultural rituals, and self-portraits populate his images, whose unforgiving subject matter and artistic acumen owe much to Francis Bacon, German Expressionism, and Goya.

 

Bartow came to understand the possibilities for correcting course. This new exhibition focuses on some of his darkest subject matter. Yet he was steadfast in his belief that there are slivers of hope. Nine works on paper from throughout his career are included, as well as Horse, a sculpture from 2014 covered in tar, wax, false teeth, and nails. The object is a study of sustained resilience.

 

A major solo exhibition of his work, Storyteller, is currently on view at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and was organized by Kathleen Ash-Milby and Erin Grant. His work is in over one hundred museum collections, and was recently added to the permanent collections of the Morgan Library, the de Young Museum, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Crystal Bridges, the Speed Art Museum, Bates College Museum of Art, Stanley Museum of Art, and others. Joining a long list who already hold his work, including: the Whitney Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery,  MFA Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, Portland Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, The Heard Museum, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Seattle Art Museum, and scores of others.

 

Things You Know But Cannot Explain was a touring retrospective of Bartow’s art that visited eleven cities over five years; it originated at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, in Eugene, curated by Jill Hartz and Danielle Knapp. We Were Always Here is a monumental pair of commissioned sculptures by Bartow installed in 2012 on the National Mall outside The Smithsonian's NMAI. Recently his work was included in the landmark exhibition Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self- Determination since 1969, curated by Candice Hopkins at the Hessel Museum/ CCS Bard and the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Saskatchewan.