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Love in the Afternoon
Post #1510 • February 3, 2012, 12:31 PM • 1 Comment
![[Image: After ]](http://www.artblog.net/static/posts/2012/02/bartlett/bartlett.jpg)
After Penumbra by Bo Bartlett
[Betsy] was excited that Andrew was home again working on a painting out of their bedroom window, looking out past the milldam. The Helga story had broken in 1986, and the sting was still evident in the air around there. As I recall, Helga had seen the painting of the window and suggested a title, later when Betsy came up with the perfect title and usurped the temporary title it was a victory in more ways than one.
Bartlett, one of the finer realists we have, is teaching a master class in Georgia in March. I sometimes long to live in Bartlett's orderly world. It borders on William Bailey's and Balthus's and Piero's. But I am not welcome there. I am the barbarian from the South. My paint wants to be known as paint, my marks as marks. I would be an impostor there, pretending, among walkers, not to want to sprint. It can't be helped.
1.
Chris Rywalt
February 3, 2012, 8:31 PM
You've described perfectly the way I feel about realist painting, including Bo Bartlett's, whose work I first saw, from a longing distance, hanging in the window of a closed gallery in Philadelphia. "Pretending, among walkers, not to want to sprint" is exactly right: I never had the patience to be a realist or even a Surrealist using realism to paint surreal vistas, which once I thought was my highest aspiration. That was when I thought thinking had something to do with it.