Rick Bartow: Bridging Worlds Through Art
Rick Bartow (1946-2016) was one of the most distinctive and powerful voices in contemporary Native American art. A member of the Weminuche band of the Ute tribe and Mad River band Yurok, Bartow created a body of work that defied easy categorization, drawing from his indigenous heritage, his experiences as a Vietnam War veteran, and his deep engagement with the natural world. His art—spanning drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture—explored themes of transformation, identity, and the profound connections between human and animal realms.
Early Life and Formative Experiences
Born in Newport, Oregon, in 1946, Bartow grew up on the Oregon coast in a family deeply connected to Yurok traditions. His father was a commercial fisherman, and Bartow spent his youth immersed in the landscapes and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest—imagery that would remain central to his artistic vision throughout his life.
Bartow initially studied secondary art education at Western Oregon State College (now Western Oregon University), graduating in 1969. However, his trajectory was dramatically altered when he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971. The trauma of war left profound psychological scars, and Bartow struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism for years after his return. Art became his lifeline, a means of processing trauma, exploring identity, and finding a path toward healing.
Artistic Development and Style
Bartow’s artistic style evolved significantly over his career, but certain elements remained constant: raw emotional intensity, technical virtuosity, and a willingness to explore the darker corners of human experience. His early work was more representational, but over time he developed a distinctive approach that merged figuration with expressionistic abstraction.
His materials and techniques were notably diverse. Bartow worked in pastel, charcoal, graphite, oil paint, watercolor, and mixed media. He was also an accomplished printmaker, creating powerful monotypes and etchings, and later in his career, he produced striking sculptures in wood and bronze. His surfaces often bore the marks of vigorous physical engagement—smudging, erasure, overworking—creating a palimpsest effect that suggested layers of memory and meaning.
Transformation and Animal Spirits
One of Bartow’s most recognizable and profound themes was transformation, particularly the metamorphosis between human and animal forms. Crows, ravens, coyotes, elk, horses, and dogs appear throughout his work, often in states of flux—half-human, half-animal, or caught in the process of shifting between forms. These images drew on indigenous traditions of shapeshifting and spirit animals while also serving as powerful metaphors for psychological states and the fluid nature of identity.
“I’m interested in that moment of change,” Bartow once explained, “that moment between what we are and what we’re becoming.”
His animal figures were never merely symbolic or decorative. They possessed a visceral, often unsettling presence, their eyes meeting the viewer’s gaze with discomfiting directness. In works like “Raven and Coyote” or his many crow portraits, Bartow captured something essential about these creatures while simultaneously using them to explore human consciousness, survival, and transformation.
Addressing Trauma and Healing
Bartow never shied away from the painful aspects of his experience. His work frequently addressed the trauma of war, the struggles of addiction and recovery, and the historical violence inflicted upon Native American communities. Self-portraits appeared regularly throughout his oeuvre, often showing the artist in states of vulnerability or transformation, sometimes merged with animal features.
Yet Bartow’s work was never purely about suffering. It was equally about resilience, survival, and the possibility of healing. His art embodied a kind of visual therapy, a working-through of trauma that acknowledged pain while reaching toward transcendence. The very act of making—the physical engagement with materials, the repeated gestures of drawing and erasing—became a form of healing practice.
Cultural Identity and Native American Art
Bartow occupied a complex position in relation to both the contemporary art world and the category of “Native American art.” He drew deeply from indigenous traditions and mythology, but resisted being confined to a narrow definition of what Native art should look like. He was influenced by European expressionists like Käthe Kollwitz and Chaim Soutine as much as by indigenous artistic traditions, and he insisted on the right to a full artistic vocabulary.
This position sometimes put him at odds with expectations. The market for Native American art often privileged traditional forms and imagery, while the contemporary art world could be slow to recognize Native artists working in modernist or contemporary idioms. Bartow navigated these tensions with integrity, creating work that honored his heritage while refusing to be limited by it.
Recognition and Legacy
Despite facing the challenges of being a Native American artist in a predominantly white art world, Bartow achieved significant recognition during his lifetime. His work was included in major exhibitions and is held in important public collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum. In 2002, he received the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award, and in 2016, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University organized a major retrospective exhibition.
Bartow continued to work prolifically until his death in 2016 at age 69. In his later years, he had achieved a measure of peace that eluded him for much of his life, though his art retained its emotional intensity and formal power.
Artistic Impact
Rick Bartow’s significance extends beyond his individual achievement. He helped expand the definition of contemporary Native American art, demonstrating that indigenous artists could work in any style or medium while maintaining deep connections to their cultural heritage. He showed that trauma could be transformed into powerful art without becoming merely therapeutic or confessional, and that regional subjects—the animals and landscapes of the Pacific Northwest—could carry universal meaning.
His work continues to influence younger generations of Native American artists who see in Bartow’s example a model of artistic integrity: the possibility of being fully contemporary and fully indigenous, of engaging with difficult personal and historical truths while creating work of formal beauty and emotional depth.
Conclusion
Rick Bartow created art that was simultaneously deeply personal and broadly resonant. His images of transformation—of humans becoming animals, of pain transmuting into beauty, of fragmentation giving way to wholeness—speak to fundamental aspects of human experience. In an art world often divided between formal innovation and social engagement, between personal expression and cultural commentary, Bartow’s work suggests these need not be separate pursuits.
His legacy is one of courage—the courage to face trauma, to resist easy categorization, to create from a place of authentic cultural identity while engaging with the full history of art. The crows and coyotes, the self-portraits and totemic figures that populate his work remain vital presences, reminding us of art’s power to witness, to transform, and to heal.
