Brandywine II, 1997
Offset Lithograph
Edition of 100
30 x 22 in
Collaborating Printer: Bob Franklin
Rick Bartow described drawing as medicine, and looking at Brandywine II, that word feels exactly right. A dark, turbulent bloom erupts from a slender glass vase at the center of the composition, its forms barely contained, spilling outward in marks that feel less rendered than released. Bartow's line is restless and physical, the kind of drawing that travels from somewhere deep before it ever reaches the paper.
Around the image, text runs along the borders of the print like a frame within the frame, referencing addresses, galleries, and cities (Tokyo, Philadelphia) mapping a life lived in constant creative motion. Yellow bursts of color flare from within the dark mass of the flower, the only moment of warmth in an otherwise charged and shadowed image.
Bartow, a member of the Wiyot Nation, spoke openly about using his practice to survive. Drawing was how he moved through addiction, loss, and the accumulated weight of a difficult life. The marks he left behind carry that history without explaining it. Brandywine II does not ask to be understood so much as felt, which is, in the end, exactly what the best medicine does.
