Bo Bartlett

(American, born 1955)

Bo Bartlett is an American realist painter who works in the tradition of Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, and Andrew Wyeth. Bartlett’s paintings combine the profound qualities of everyday life with the semantic obscurity of René Magritte. “Bartlett looks at America’s heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life,” museum director Tom Butler wrote of him. Born on December 29, 1955 in Columbus, GA, Bartlett studied in Florence, Italy before attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 2018, the artist and Columbus State University unveiled the Bo Bartlett Center, with a mission to bring arts to the community. He currently lives and works between Columbus, GA and Wheaton Island, ME with his wife the artist Betsy Eby. Today, Bartlett’s works are held in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina, the Denver Museum of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum, among others.