Bartlet 2025 Artist Statement
My Landscape painting is a physical dance composed of line, color, and the joy of mark-making. I want you to see the paint, I want you to see the picture, and I want you to feel these moments in time just as I did.
As an observational artist, I respect that abstraction is inherent in the art-making process. It is undeniably a human filter of emotion, intellect, and memory. It is fundamental to understand abstraction as the result of a lived experience. It is filtered through the human mind and reduced by visual limitations. I think it is the very confines of that process that ignite my curiosity and expand the possibilities of a painting.
For me, color and shape are the representatives of light. Light is color, and color is light. In the visual language of landscape painting, color is the timestamp of a moment. It tells us the time, location, and physical conditions of the experience. This body of work is the continued exploration and collection of moments.
It is mark-making that leaves the undeniable thumbprint of the human touch in a painting. When viewing work, the marks themselves give each piece its rhythm, and also, a collection of paintings, when viewed together, creates synergy. Manipulation of the physical texture of the paint remains distractingly exciting to me.
The studies in my small work are controlled, and always too tight really - the larger work allows for opening up those tight compositions in a newfound observation of space. The play of making small work and alternately, larger work, produces a more gestural, energetic paint application. For me, the scale provides different but necessary answers to the same questions.
So in the dance of line, color, and mark-making, I am mindful of their significance to each moment I attempt to capture, in each picture I try to hold, and in every painting I make.
Bartlet 2025 Artist Bio
Jessica McGarry Bartlet is a professional artist. She grew up in Southeast Connecticut and graduated from St. Bernard High School. Bartlet attended Eastern Michigan University and received a BFA with a concentration in Drawing in 2005. She attended the New York Studio School for the 2007 Drawing Marathon with Graham Nickson and as an MFA candidate at Western Connecticut State University from 2007 to 2009. She held a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in the spring of 2010 and was accepted as a member, via invitation, to the First Street Gallery, an artist-run gallery in New York City in 2010. Bartlet currently serves on the board of First Street. She teaches art history at Post University and Naugatuck Valley Community College and still prioritizes teaching watercolor for EdAdvance continuing education. Bartlet lives in Northwest, CT, and published her first book, Backyard Wilderness, in 2024.
My Landscape painting is a physical dance composed of line, color, and the joy of mark-making. I want you to see the paint, I want you to see the picture, and I want you to feel these moments in time just as I did.
As an observational artist, I respect that abstraction is inherent in the art-making process. It is undeniably a human filter of emotion, intellect, and memory. It is fundamental to understand abstraction as the result of a lived experience. It is filtered through the human mind and reduced by visual limitations. I think it is the very confines of that process that ignite my curiosity and expand the possibilities of a painting.
For me, color and shape are the representatives of light. Light is color, and color is light. In the visual language of landscape painting, color is the timestamp of a moment. It tells us the time, location, and physical conditions of the experience. This body of work is the continued exploration and collection of moments.
It is mark-making that leaves the undeniable thumbprint of the human touch in a painting. When viewing work, the marks themselves give each piece its rhythm, and also, a collection of paintings, when viewed together, creates synergy. Manipulation of the physical texture of the paint remains distractingly exciting to me.
The studies in my small work are controlled, and always too tight really - the larger work allows for opening up those tight compositions in a newfound observation of space. The play of making small work and alternately, larger work, produces a more gestural, energetic paint application. For me, the scale provides different but necessary answers to the same questions.
So in the dance of line, color, and mark-making, I am mindful of their significance to each moment I attempt to capture, in each picture I try to hold, and in every painting I make.
Bartlet 2025 Artist Bio
Jessica McGarry Bartlet is a professional artist. She grew up in Southeast Connecticut and graduated from St. Bernard High School. Bartlet attended Eastern Michigan University and received a BFA with a concentration in Drawing in 2005. She attended the New York Studio School for the 2007 Drawing Marathon with Graham Nickson and as an MFA candidate at Western Connecticut State University from 2007 to 2009. She held a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in the spring of 2010 and was accepted as a member, via invitation, to the First Street Gallery, an artist-run gallery in New York City in 2010. Bartlet currently serves on the board of First Street. She teaches art history at Post University and Naugatuck Valley Community College and still prioritizes teaching watercolor for EdAdvance continuing education. Bartlet lives in Northwest, CT, and published her first book, Backyard Wilderness, in 2024.
