Intimate Worlds

BO BARTLETT’S NEWEST PAINTINGS AT MILES MCENERY GALLERY BALANCE THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES.

In 1807 William Wordsworth published a sonnet that could have been written yesterday. The World Is Too Much With Us today as it was then, perhaps even more so with 24-hour news providing information into conflicts around the globe and on our failure to be caring stewards of the world we live in.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. Bo Bartlett paints large narrative paintings that relate “to situations in the world right now—environmentally, socially, politically. I’m not taking a stand,” he says. “I’m presenting the problem. One of our jobs is to remain as objective as possible. To at least be aware and not to fall victim to any side or propaganda.”

In the summer, he and his wife, artist Betsy Eby, live on a tiny island 20 or so miles off the Maine coast. Wheaton Island is adjacent to Matinicus Island and forms the eastern part of the larger island’s harbor. Wheaton’s highest elevation above sea level is 26 feet and it comprises about 20 acres of granite ledge and trees.

When the world is too much with him, he takes his dinghy out for a row around the island, to clear his head and to become—as it were—grounded.