Among them, he counted Herb Arris from whom he took evening classes at H. B. Beal Secondary School in London, Ontario (1958),[4] Vera Frenkel at the University of Toronto (1960)[5] and Telesforas Valius at Central Technical School, Toronto (1965–1968),[5] with both of whom he studied etching.
[6] In the 1950s, on a canoe trip to Georgian Bay with his friends, he discovered Bartram Island (named after him in 1991) which he bought around 1965.
[7] Although in the 1960s, he had experimented with what he learned from Frenkel and Valius, making abstract prints and paintings, around 1970, on the island, he had a revelation.
He conceived of the scene as providing a metaphor for the way he made prints since in using an etching plate and gouging and scraping it, he felt he was reenacting the primordial forces he saw in action on the rockscape.
In the 1970s, Bartram made prints of the rock faces and their surfaces, often suggesting the lichen that covered them through intaglio,[9] then in 1977, recorded the scene itself in Georgian Bay with rock as a large part of the scene, leaving only a narrow area of sky at the top.