Curtis Bartone
bio Curtis Bartone’s paintings, drawings, etchings, and lithographs have been shown in twenty-one solo exhibitions and in more than seventy-five group exhibitions. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant and two Illinois Arts Council Grants. Bartone has been awarded several international residencies and has been invited as a visit- ing artist by several colleges and universities. In the summer of 2016, he will be a resident artist at Emmanuel College in Boston, Massachusetts, where he will create a suite of etchings based on the Plagues of Egypt. Currently, he resides in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife and seven cats, where he splits his time between making prints and teaching printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design. artist’s statement Filtered through the lens of art history, natural sciences, lit- erature, religion/mythology, and contemporary mass media, Curtis Bartone’s work explores the idea of wilderness and how it has changed from being a tangible, albeit romanti- cized, place to a distorted fiction or myth taking form in arti - ficial and virtual realities. This myth has a powerful effect on our fragmented perception of the environment and our place in it. Throughout history humankind has striven to dominate and exploit “wildness” for its benefit, while at the same time art has been employed as a means to translate, analyze, and reconfigure the idea of nature. Bartone’s recent pieces create hybrid quilted landscapes, incorporating incongruous situa- tions and elements as a device to examine and question the human need not only to classify and control—perhaps out of a fear of chaos and uncertainty—but to intervene and claim our place in the fabric of the landscape.
Ora et Labora
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