BO BARTLETT

"Bo Bartlett intensifies his luminous realism through an evocative sense of enlarged possibilities. His way of defining his worlds through paint and light sustains an overwhelming indwelling quality that defies instantaneity and quick reads. What’s most striking is how the vivid ambient light that suffuses his work—often very large and often including nearly life-size figures—absorbs us into that work. The artist’s light-filled vision gives off the sensations of openness, clarity, and simplicity; it allows our attention to linger, invitingly, on and in Bartlett’s compositions and his figures." 

- Dominique Nahas in "Bo Bartlett's Art Wakes Us Up"

"Bartlett’s most recent works, to this eye, are ambitiously realized with a boldness that is matched with exquisitely calibrated nuance. The artist has tried to leave these paintings more open than he has left his prior works, and he has succeeded. In spite of the often vast sizes of these paintings, he has kept a lightness of touch, has avoided overworking them, and has kept them looking fresh, while avoiding a too-deliberate look of non finito."

- Dominique Nahas in "Bo Bartlett's Art Wakes Us Up"

"La Corrida gives off plenty of heat, and the painterly facticity of Bartlett’s applied and reapplied brushstrokes raises the temperature level. The artist’s mark-making is viscous and dramatic. It is also horrific, as it resembles the running and pooling of the bull’s blood with nearly grotesque viscerality. And it energizes the entire painting."

- Dominique Nahas in "Bo Bartlett's Art Wakes Us Up" 

"In Travel Mercies, the praying figure in jacket and tie wears elastic Japanese slippers as he kneels on a country road. The front end of the Mercedes vehicle to the right is depicted almost as a fourth character, playing an associative role that has bearing on the painting and its title. 'Mercedes,' the brand name, is derived from the Spanish word 'mercy.' More specifically, it refers to Our Lady of Mercy. Bartlett’s Mercedes serves as a visual associative device in the painting’s devotional context as an evocation of the Virgin Mary as the interceding bearer of divine mercy."

- Dominique Nahas in "Bo Bartlett's Art Wakes Us Up"