Bo Bartlett

Bo Bartlett (born December 29, 1955) is an American realist painter, working in Columbus, Georgia and Wheaton Island, Maine.

[2] At the age of 18 he traveled to Florence, Italy where he studied mural painting under the American expatriate, Ben Long.

[5] During this period, he studied anatomy at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, mirroring the approach of the 19th century realist painter, Thomas Eakins.

[8] His paintings are inspired by American Realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell, and Andrew Wyeth.

The scenes Bartlett depicts are familiar – children dressed up on Halloween, two young women riding a bike, a man rowing on a sunny day – yet there is “an oddity about his works that creates psychological pause within the viewer.”[7] The uncanny nature, the familiar yet dreamlike quality of Bartlett’s work shows the influence of Surrealists such as Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Giorgio de Chirico.

[7] Young Life, 78 x 108 inches, oil on linen, 1994, private collection on loan to Ogden Museum, New Orleans, LA.

Homeland references several historical paintings including Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Raft of the Medusa and Liberty Leading the People.

The man in the rowboat is dressed casually and the day is bright, yet he is surrounded by threats including a shark in the water and a large crashing wave.

[24] He also directed HELGA, a documentary short about Andrew Wyeth’s muse and model, and Things Don’t Stay Fixed.

The film tells the story of a worldly photojournalist returning to the Deep South to stop his daughter’s wedding and save her future, only to find that it is he who has been stuck in the past.

The film stars William Gregory Lee, Tara Ochs, Brenda Bynum, Desi Evans, and Melissa Saint-Amand.

[25] The film follows photojournalist Sam Grace (William Gregory Lee) as he returns home to the Deep South in an attempt to stop his daughter, Nina (Melissa Saint-Amand), from what he sees as a misguided marriage.

“At its heart, this is a film about grief, and finding joy and beauty in the midst of it,” says star Melissa Saint-Amand.

[27] Things Don’t Stay Fixed draws inspiration from the Southern Gothic literary works of Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers.