Walk with me as we enter the Karin Clarke Gallery at 760 Willamette in Eugene. We are not here for pretty or pleasant; we are here to encounter the intense, visionary, haunted, mystical spirits of the late, great Rick Bartow.
Be prepared for the explosion of ferocious beasts leaping out of the wall at you.
Rick Bartow was an Oregon Native American artist whose biography is interesting, but we’re here for the art.
The first feature that draws me is Bartow’s strong, aggressive mark making. I love his bold, colorful strokes across the page. Then when I stand back and look at the gallery as a whole, I notice something I think you would enjoy looking for, too. Many of the paintings have the main subject of interest–like a growling bear or angry dog–in the top third of the page. Then two long lines like black braids frame the lower two thirds, which is often left white or very minimal.
To me, that is like a human head with two braids in basic shape. While the heads are rarely human, the proportions suggest they are. That is one way to understand that in Bartow’s intense internal world, animals and humans are interchangeable.
“When I returned from Vietnam, like so many others, I was a bit twisted,” he wrote. “I was a house filled with irrational fears, beliefs, and symbols. Wind-blown paper would send me running; crows became many things; I never remembered dreams and detested the wind; I wore bells on my wrists so I could hear my parts when they moved; I slept in my clothes so I’d be ready to go nowhere at all. And I recall once answering when asked my name and where I was from, ‘Nobody. Nowhere.’"
The path of art brought Bartow to a life that honored ritual and ceremony. It is our privilege to witness for him in this fine exhibition.