Rick Bartow: Storyteller

Rick Bartow: Storyteller is on view at the Portland Art Museum through November 28, 2027. It's a wide-ranging look at the work of Rick Bartow (1946–2016), a Wiyot and American artist who spent much of his life near Newport on the Oregon coast. He was an enrolled member of the Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians, and his work earned him a place among the most significant names in contemporary Native American art.

Bartow worked across a lot of different media, and this show brings them together under one roof. You'll find large pastel and graphite drawings, acrylic paintings, prints, carved wood, and mixed-media sculpture. The common thread is transformation: human faces becoming birds, coyotes, and bears; bodies dissolving into marks; identities shifting between the physical, ancestral, emotional, and spiritual worlds. He resisted being pinned down to a single definition of Native art, drawing on his Wiyot identity while engaging with artists like Francis Bacon, Marc Chagall, and Odilon Redon. The exhibition also gathers material related to his music and short films produced by the Bartow Trusts.

Knowing a bit about the man helps the work click. Bartow was a figure of deep complexity. He was a Vietnam veteran who served as a teletype operator from 1969 to 1971 and earned a Bronze Star. He was also a talented blues-rock musician and songwriter. He died in 2016 of congestive heart failure at age 69. That mix of backgrounds—the veteran, the musician, the Wiyot artist—runs through the work, which moves between the grounded and the spiritual.

You can find the exhibition in Gallery 302 at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave, and it's included with general admission.