BO BARTLETT

NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Bo Bartlett, on view 30 January through 15 March 2025 at 515 West 22nd Street. This exhibition brings together works from two distinct but intimately connected series: his early “Home” paintings and the more recent “Summer” works. While deeply personal, these works invite viewers to reflect on universal themes—longing, nostalgia, and the sense of home—offering a moment of connection through shared human experience. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated digital publication featuring an essay by Patricia Junker.

As Patricia Junker writes, “Bartlett embraces what he calls his topophilia: More than a connection, it is love of place.” Take his work, Home, where “we feel the texture of a subject’s madras shorts, the elasticity of her red knit headband, the suppleness of her black leather ballet flats, cast aside, and the soothing feel of cool grass on her bare feet and its scratchiness on a boy’s knees and palms. We know that time of day when light can penetrate a white linen shirt just so, and we know the quiet that allows a tuckered-out child to lie listening, lost in thought, on the verge of dreamland, perhaps. We take stock and try to make sense of a strange scene—a house of dark windows, a searching youth who crawls to peer around a corner, a forthright young woman at the center, a still baby at the far right. It seems as real before us as life itself. It is at once familiar and curious, because, as Eudora Welty has aptly put it, ‘Life is strange. Art makes it more believably so.’”

BO BARTLETT (b. 1955 in Columbus, GA) received his Certificate of Fine Arts in 1981 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a Certificate of Filmmaking from New York University in 1986. In 2023, Bartlett received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Art from the New York Academy of Art and The Honorary Certificate from the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts.

Bartlett has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL; Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Old Lyme, CT; The Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus, GA; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Weber Fine Art, Greenwich, CT; The Florence Academy of Art, Jersey City, NJ; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; and the Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL.

His work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous institutions including the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; National Arts Club, New York, NY; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Linz, Austria; Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC.

Bartlett’s work may be found in the collections of the Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA; Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; La Salle University Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA, and elsewhere.

Bartlett is the recipient of rewards and accolades including the South Arts Fellowship, South Arts, Atlanta, GA; Atelier Focus Fellowship, Chattahoochee Hills, GA; 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia, PA; Museum Merit Award, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, GA; Museum Merit Award, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; and the Benjamin Lanard Memorial Award, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, among others.

The artist lives and works in Columbus, GA and Wheaton Island, ME.

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Selected Works

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