Bo Bartlett 2021

BO BARTLETT

BO BARTLETT

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

511 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

BO BARTLETT: A MAGNOLIA MELANCHOLY

By Matthew Jeffrey Abrams

I

There is, one could say, a modern tradition of Southern absurdity. Bo Bartlett knows this. He paints strange, beautiful, disquieting scenes. Visions, really. They are delicate and austere. They are also humorous and bizarre. And nearly all of his new works seem to inhabit a shared world: a sort of nameless, indistinguishable, dreamscape America. The vibe is old-timey, innocent, and small-town.

But it is also, at times, disquieting, anguished, and dark. Think of these new paintings as down-home, country-cooked phantasmagoria. A star-spangled, mint-julep-and-mescaline haze. Gonzo Americana.

Bartlett is Southern with a capital S. You can see his Georgian roots in the faces that he paints, always so dignified and upright, and in the rich and luminous colors that seem to depict sky. In many works, we confront a person or persons who are staring right back at us. Like actors soliloquizing, these figures seem very much to desire an audience, and to address it directly. Bartlett’s works possess a unique sense of Southern theater. They are twender, haunting vignettes in matte pinks and greyish blues. A magnolia melancholy, you might say.

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The Thin Veil is a charming group portrait of four young adults. Their eyes are closed, and yet all of them insistently address the viewer. We meet their false gazes with our own, and we are left to wonder: What’s behind this hypnosis? Who are these young people—banded together and yet so alone? Why the collective slumber, and why those strange foil caps?

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Ferdinand Hodler, The Disappointed Souls (Les âmes déçues), 1892, Oil on canvas, 47 1/4 x 117 3/4 inches, 120 x 299 cm Photo: Courtesy Kunstmuseum Bern, Stadt Bern

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Each person dons a narrow, conical headpiece. You can see where the aluminum foil has creased, and where the light glints sharply off its surface. Saddle shoes, sneakers, and cowboy boots hide in the wheat-like, Andrew Wyeth-style grass (a small but pointed homage that we find throughout Bartlett’s work). With their empty, soporific stares and that dark sense of isolation, the figures in Bartlett’s The Thin Veil come off much like the figures in Ferdinand Hodler’s The Disappointed Souls (1892), a symbolist masterpiece that captured the same sense of desolate ennui more than a hundred years ago. Behold once more this troupe with crinkled cones atop their heads. Behold this true “Confederacy of Dunces,” to steal a line from another great Southern absurdist, John Kennedy Toole.

This odd little “dunce cap,” taped together like a do-it-yourself papal miter, reappears in another painting, Motherland. The setting is the same as The Thin Veil’s. Bartlett’s mother poses this time.

Her chair is more dignified than the collapsible chairs that held the younger folks, but the cap remains. In this more finished work, Bartlett’s technical facility is on full display. The foil is rendered in sharp, metallic facets. Mother’s puffy red cheeks are soft and fleshy. There are shocks of light, like on her nose and lower lip, but otherwise the opacity is toned down—just as it is in The Thin Veil.

Motherland, also like The Thin Veil, is outwardly austere but inwardly agitated. Those striped trousers help lend the work a festive, carnivalesque sensibility: This is a truly surreal Southern set piece.

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And maybe the carnivalesque is a good way to characterize Bartlett’s newest works—which is to say, these paintings are subversions of reality and reorientations of norms. They exist in an alternate space. They upend. They are a sort of ecstatic, hopeful gesture that seeks to destabilize. They are chaos beneath a veneer of stability.

Look once more at The Thin Veil, and note the plume of smoke rising on the horizon. It’s not much, but it’s more than enough to shatter whatever sleepy naïveté this painting might have otherwise possessed. There is a massive conflagration, unbeknownst to this caravan of dazed tween-bishops.

They are too far away to hear, or feel, anything.

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The bicyclist in Fairground is not so fortunate. A real carnival has caught his attention, but who could ignore that same plume of smoke trailing in the wind?

What are we viewing, really? By tradition, we would call this a genre painting. A bucolic landscape.

A tender scene of rural life. It’s the day of the local county fair, after all. Only this county fair exists in Bartlett’s desolate, corn-on-the-cob dreamscape. And it seems to be on fire.

Fairground offers another panicked pastoral. Most of Bartlett’s new paintings can unsettle. Sometimes they flicker from serenity to chaos. He imbues them with a certain imbalance; they exist on the edge of coherence. Like a punch-drunk Norman Rockwell, Bartlett destabilizes the idyllic, American fantasy.

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Deus Ex Machina, 2020, Oil on panel, 24 x 48 inches, 60.96 x 121.92 cm

V

The dramatic seems to be a concern for Bartlett. Some of these new works abandon the subtle anxiety of The Thin Veil and company for something more overt and theatrical. Deus Ex Machina fits this bill, giving us a glorious, early 1970s Corvette Stingray hoisted into a cloudy sky. Viewed from slightly below, this classic American hot rod looks all the more phallic and absurd. Note the red, iron-rich dirt still stuck to the wheels and the undercarriage, as if something, or someone, had just plucked this car from a back-country cruise.

Deus Ex Machina literally means just this. As a plot device, the deus ex machina or “god from the machine” dates to Greek antiquity. It has come to mean any narrative twist that suddenly, and very cleanly, provides a contrived resolution to the conflict and drama at hand. In fifth century BCE Athens, this would have meant the sudden intervention of a deity, who, in all likelihood, would have

The Age of Discovery, 2020, Oil on linen, 48 1/8 x 66 inches, 122.2 x 167.6 cm

descended onto the stage from above using a special crane built for the theater. I like Bartlett’s pun here. After all, for a certain kind of American, a ’72 Stingray really is a god. But there is more going on than that.

VI

We take flight again in The Age of Discovery, this time hovering alongside a spotless, silver zeppelin. It’s a perfect “shot.” We have an ideal angle to watch it stream through the sky. It’s majestic and weightless, just like our dear Stingray. But who can look at a zeppelin like this and not, with visions of the Hindenburg at the back of our minds, think of an imminent, utter catastrophe? Deus Ex Machina is all about lifting up. But this work, to me, is all about going down. Once again, there is that telltale sense of unease that motivates so many of Bartlett’s new works.

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This staging and theatricality gives Bartlett’s work a very cinematic feel. Think of the magic-hour lighting in Motherland or The Thin Veil, or the dramatic angle of Deus Ex Machina. In his largest new work, Crowd Scene, we become even more enmeshed in this cinematic realm.

VII

Crowd Scene, at 6 feet tall and 11 feet wide, is the largest work in the show. More than a dozen onlookers gather along the far side of a yellow police barrier. As in The Thin Veil, we are met with a group of figures in a state of waiting. Again, there is a restriction of movement, only now that restriction is physical and not psychic. And the figures are staring at us. It’s almost as if they are waiting on us, too. The cast has assembled for one final confrontation.

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And there is that beautiful woman, center stage. Our brave heroine. Note her stalwart pose, her wet eyes, and her smeared mascara. This is a depiction of sorrow; the figures stand like mourners lining an open grave. The telephone pole suddenly resolves into a lonely cross, while the police officer oversees what remains of this grisly ritual. The painting is pregnant with drama. It has the polish and choreography of a tightly scripted, high-production, cinematic vision.

VIII

In Crowd Scene, we are denied the spectacle at hand. We must imagine what has inspired such shock and anguish. In Where Did All That Life Go, we receive the opposite: a spectacle worthy of such stares. Or really, a massive, bloodstained, beheaded shark on a makeshift table by the sea.

It looks as if the blood has permeated into the shark’s oily skin. Around its nose and mouth the carmine streaks look burnished and smooth. The shark has also bled onto the plywood table, and from there onto an oil drum and the ground. Someone has carved off the head, exposing a cross section

of muscle and blubber. The magnificent creature seems particularly lifeless and forlorn, as the title suggests. There is no dignity in this moment; it resolves as sheer brutality and nothing else. It is also one of those simple but stunning absurdities of life. Where Did All That Life Go is a vignette. A forgotten moment from an unknown beach on the South Atlantic Coast.

A true scene of magnolia melancholy.

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Matthew Jeffrey Abrams is an essayist, critic, and art historian. In 2017 he received a PhD in art history from Yale University, where he was the A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellow at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

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Georgia, 2021

Oil on linen 60 x 80 inches 152.4 x 203.2 cm

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Study for Hurtsboro, 2021

Oil on panel 24 x 48 inches 61 x 121.9 cm

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The Fitting, 2021 Oil on panel 32 x 43 1/8 inches 81.3 x 109.5 cm

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The Thin Veil, 2021 Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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Crowd Scene, 2020 Oil on linen 72 1/4 x 132 1/8 inches 183.5 x 335.6 cm

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Defender, 2020 Oil on linen 60 x 80 inches 152.4 x 203.2 cm

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Matinicus, 2020 Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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Motherland, 2020 Oil on linen 66 x 48 1/8 inches 167.6 x 122.2 cm

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The Midway, 2020

Oil on panel 48 x 60 inches 121.9 x 152.4 cm

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Where Did All That Life Go, 2020 Oil on linen 48 1/4 x 82 1/4 inches 122.6 x 208.9 cm

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Draw Out The Child, 2019

Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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Freedom, 2019 Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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Homestead, 2019

Oil on linen 48 x 66 inches 121.9 x 167.6 cm

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Isthmus, 2019 Oil on linen 60 x 80 inches 152.4 x 203.2 cm

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Things Don’t Stay Fixed, 2019 Oil on linen 80 x 100 inches 203.2 x 254 cm

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Life During Wartime, 2018

Oil on linen 60 x 80 inches 152.4 x 203.2 cm

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The Flood, 2018 Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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Diaspora, 2016 Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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Dominion, 2016 Oil on linen 82 x 100 inches 208.3 x 254 cm

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BO BARTLETT Born in Columbus, GA in 1955 Lives and works in Columbus, GA and Wheaton Island, ME

EDUCATION 1981 Certificate of Fine Arts, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT 2019 “Forty Years of Drawing,” The Florence Academy of Art, Jersey City, NJ “Paintings and Works on Paper,” Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT 2018 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Retrospective,” The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA

2013 University of Mississippi Museum, Oxford, MS “Love and Other Sacraments,” Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME 2011 “Paintings of Home,” Illges Gallery, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA “A Survey of Paintings,” W.C. Bradley Co. Museum, Columbus, GA “Sketchbooks, Journals and Studies,” Columbus Bank & Trust, Columbus, GA 2010 Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME “Paintings of Home,” P·P·O·W, New York, NY US Artists American Fine Art Show, Philadelphia, PA 2009 Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Forum Gallery, New York, NY David Klein Gallery, Birmingham, MI Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA 2008 US Artists American Fine Art Show, Philadelphia, PA

2017 “Paintings from the Outpost,” Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME “Bo Bartlett: American Artist,” The Mennello Museum of American Art and Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL

2007 “Travelogue,” Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE US Artists American Fine Art Show, Philadelphia, PA “Still Point,” Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME David Klein Gallery, Birmingham, MI Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle, WA

2016 Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY

2006 “This Inner/Outer World,” P·P·O·W, New York, NY

2014 Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA

2004 “Innocence Found,” DFN Gallery, New York, NY “Still Point of the Turning World,” P·P·O·W, New York, NY “New Paintings and Works on Paper,” Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle, WA “Still Point,” Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

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2003 “Heartland: Paintings by Bo Bartlett, 1978-2002,” Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA, traveled to The Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

1995 John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA Struve Gallery, Chicago, IL

2002 P·P·O·W, New York, NY

1993 F.A.N. Gallery, Philadelphia, PA The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

2001 Brendan Walter Gallery, Los Angeles, CA The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA

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2000 “Water Series,” University at Buffalo Art Gallery, SUNY, Buffalo, NY P·P·O·W, New York, NY

1994 P·P·O·W, New York, NY

1992 Daniel Saxon Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1991 P·P·O·W, New York, NY 1990 Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC

1999 Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL Torch Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands P·P·O·W, New York, NY

1988 P·P·O·W, New York, NY The Cast Iron Building, Philadelphia, PA

1998 P·P·O·W, New York, NY

1986 The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

1997 Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

1985 The More Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

1996 P·P·O·W, New York, NY Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS F.A.N. Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

1983 Columbus Museum of Arts, Columbus, GA 1982 Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2021 “Extra Ordinary, Magic Mystery, and Imagination in American Realism,” Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA 2020 “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 “Art in Embassies,” U.S. Embassy, Hanoi, Vietnam 2019 “Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby,” Ithan Substation No. 1, Villanova, PA “Person to Person,” Forum Gallery, New York, NY “Painting the Figure NOW,” Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI “Innovation and Vitality: 150 Years of Alumni from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,” Avery Galleries, Bryn Mawr, PA 2018 “Trust the Process,” Gallery 222, Malvern, PA “The Serious and the Smirk,” Sommerville Manning Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “Objects of Desire,” Bernarducci Gallery, New York, NY “Artists by Artists: The Artist as Subject,” Forum Gallery, New York, NY “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY Philadelphia Antiques & Art Show, Somerville Manning Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2017 “Nelson Shanks and His Influence: Past, Present and Future,” Stanek Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “PAINTGUIDE™ NYC,” Booth Gallery, New York, NY “Uncompromising Visions,” Cerulean Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “PoetsArtists,” Arcadia Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA “New Baroque,” Booth Gallery, New York, NY “Big Art. Small Canvas,” RJD Gallery, New York, NY

2016 “Truth & Vision: 21st Century Realism,” Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE “Behind the Easel: The Unique Voices of 20 Contemporary Representational Painters,” Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE “Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World,” Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA “Brine” (curated by Victor Grasso), SOMA NewArt Gallery, Cape May, NJ “The Things We Carry: Contemporary Art in the South,” Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC 2013 “American Masters – Art of the 19th - 21st centuries,” Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE “Nocturnes: Romancing the Night,” National Arts Club, New York, NY “The Philadelphia Story,” Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC “The Outwin Boochever 2013 Portrait Competition Exhibition,” National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. “Best of the Northwest: Selected Paintings from the Permanent Collection,” Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA 2012 “Perception of Self,” Forum Gallery, New York, NY “Not So Silent Benefit,” Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY 2010 “Real: Realism in Diverse Media,” Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA “Thriving In Seattle: A Retrospective,” GAGE Academy of Art, Seattle, WA “private (dis)play,” New York Academy of Art, New York, NY “Figure As Narrative,” Columbus State University, Columbus, GA “The Figure – Then and Now,” Delaware County Community College, Media, PA “Solemn & Sublime: Contemporary American Figure Painting,” Akus Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT

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2009 Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA “private(dis)play,” Center of Creative Arts, St Louis, MO and The Emerson Gallery at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY “Five Artists of Accomplishment from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,” Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE “American Green Summer Selections,” Forum Gallery, New York, NY Portsmouth Museum of Fine Art, Portsmouth, NH “PAFA Alumni Invitational: Legacies,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

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2008 Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “PAFA Alumni Invitational: Yesterday and Today,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA “Eby Bartlett: An Exhibition of Works by Betsy Eby and Bo Bartlett,” David Floria Gallery, Aspen, CO 2007 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA “Andrew Wyeth in Context,” David Floria Gallery, Birmingham, MI “Solstice,” David Floria Gallery, Birmingham, MI 2004 “6th Annual Realism Invitational,” Karen Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Not Just Another Pretty Vase: A Comprehensive Exhibition Still Life Painting,” Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA 2003 “Transforming the Commonplace: Masters of Contemporary Realism,” Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA Edith Caldwell Gallery, Sausalito, CA 2002 “Aquaria: Über die außergewöhnliche Beziehung von Wasser & Mensch,” OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Linz, Austria

2000 “In the Shadow of the Flag,” Tippy Stern Fine Art, Charleston, SC 1999 “Indomitable Spirits: The Figure at the end of the Century” (curated

by Grady Harp), The Art Institute of Southern California, Laguna Beach, CA “Changing Faces: Contemporary Portraiture,” Jim Kemper Fine Art, New York, NY 1998 “Oil Patch Dreams,” Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX, traveled to The Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX; The El Paso Art Museum, El Paso, TX and Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX 1997 “Re-Presenting Representation III,” Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY 1996 “Reality Bites: Realism in Contemporary Art,” The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Kansas City, MO “Heroic Painting,” Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, traveled to Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Queens Museum of Art, New York, NY; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; University Gallery, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC and Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ 1995 “25 Years,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Tattoo Your Dog,” Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC

1994 F.A.N. Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “Too Human” (curated by Annie Gawlak), Philadelphia, PA “Points of Interest/Points of Departure,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA “Fallen Idylls: American Figurative Painting” (curated by P·P·O·W and Christopher Sweet), Art Miami ‘94, Miami, FL 1993 “Drawing on the Figure” (organized by Stanley I. Grand), Carlsten Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Stevens Point, WI “Twilight Intervals” (organized by Christopher Sweet), Patricia Shea Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Preternatural Worlds,” Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, CO 1992 “Beyond Realism: Image and Enigma” (curated by Paul Binai), Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA 1991 “Three on the Figure,” Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, OH “Ex-Patriots,” Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA “Of Nature and the Human Spirit,” Daniel Saxon Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Ten Contemporary Philadelphia Painters,” Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, PA “Art for Your Collection,” Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI 1990 “Salon Show,” New York Academy of the Arts, New York, NY “Regarding Art: Artworks About Art,” John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI “Contemporary Philadelphia Artists,” Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

1989 “Revelation and Devotion: The Spirit of Religion in Contemporary Painting,” Sherry French Gallery, New York, NY, traveled to Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA; Art Gallery at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN; Valparaiso University of Art, Valparaiso, IN and Arnot Museum of Art, Elmira, NY “Love and Charity: The Tradition of Caritas in Contemporary Painting,” Sherry French Gallery, New York, NY Dowd Fine Arts Center, SUNY Cortland, Cortland, NY and Roland Gibson Gallery, SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY The Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ “Trains and Planes: The Influence of Locomotion in American Painting,” Sherry French Gallery, New York, NY Robertson Center for the Arts, Binghamton, NY National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. Evansville Museum of Arts, Evansville, IL “Delaware Biennial,” Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE “Art for your Collection,” Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI “Art of Paper,” Weatherspoon Art Gallery, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 1988 “New York Inspired: Past and Present,” John Szoke Gallery, New York, NY 1987 “Fellowship Show,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1985 “Centennial Exhibit,” The Bradley Collection, Greensboro, NC 1984 “Disdain for False Authorities,” Alternative Space, Philadelphia, PA 1983 “Fellowship Exhibition,” Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA “Midyear Show,” Butler Institute of Fine Art, Youngstown, OH

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1981 “Group Show,” Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA “Midyear Show,” Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH “Eastern Pennsylvania Regional Drawing Exhibition,” Beaver College, Glenside, PA “Rutgers National,” Rutgers University, Camden, NJ “Cresson Show,” Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA “New Talent,” Marian Locks Gallery, Philadelphia PA

AWARDS

1979 Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA

1994 PEW Fellowship in the Arts, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia, PA

2019 Atelier Focus Fellowship, Air Serenbe, Chattahoochee Hills, GA 2017 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC

1987 Museum Merit Award, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA Philadelphia Museum of Art Award, Philadelphia, PA

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1981 Benjamin Lanard Memorial Award, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1980 Eleanor S. Gray Prize for Still Life, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1980 William Emlen Cresson Traveling Scholarship, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1980 Thouron Prize, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 1979 Cecilia Beaux Memorial Portrait Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1978 Charles Toppan Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 1977 Packard Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

SELECT COLLECTIONS Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA Academy of Music, Philadelphia, PA Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC Philadelphia Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA Carpenter’s Union Hall, Washington D.C. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA Seven Bridges Foundation, Greenwich, CT Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA Curtis Institute, Philadelphia, PA Terrell Place, Washington D.C. Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO United States Mint, Philadelphia, PA Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC Hamilton Square, Washington, D.C. 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 Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA Office of the Governor, Harrisburg, PA

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

BO BARTLETT 13 May – 19 June 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2021 Matthew Jeffrey Abrams Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Elisabeth Bernstein, New York, NY Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-46-5 Cover: The Flood, (detail), 2018