Fire 1990

Bo Bartlett made this painting, Fire, with oil on linen. It’s a red drum, intensely aflame, painted with a kind of still intensity, a quiet drama. I wonder what it was like for Bartlett to paint this? The painting is both realistic and heightened. A push-pull happens; I can feel Bartlett looking carefully at the thing he's painting, and also conjuring it, summoning it, from his imagination. Look at the paint itself. The sky has a muted blue-purple, and the flames themselves—wow, they lick upward in strokes of bright oranges and yellows. A single piece of wood sits amid the blaze. What’s that about? It reminds me of how painters, like Bartlett, and also like me, are in an ongoing conversation, exchanging ideas across time. We play, we reflect, we push paint around, trying to make sense of things; to capture something essential about life, and maybe fire itself.