Cradle 1999

Bo Bartlett made *Cradle*, and I’m totally drawn into the enigmatic scene he's put together here. The color is amazing. That deep, almost electric blue of the ocean against the sky is so intense, right? And then you've got this earthy, wooden structure—a crude cradle?—grounding the whole thing. I mean, what’s going on here? Is it decay, is it hope? I can almost feel the artist’s process, puzzling over the composition, making decisions, maybe even second-guessing them along the way. I wonder if he felt the same way I do now, a little disoriented, but in a good way, like when you’re onto something. The cradle has this sort of minimalist geometric quality, very different from the painter Andrew Wyeth, but also with that same realism. I bet Bartlett was thinking about Wyeth as he made this. Artists, we’re all just talking to each other across time, riffing on the same themes, trying to make sense of it all. Painting is a way of working through those big questions, even if we don’t have all the answers.