About Bart

Baltimore County
Biography
 
I was born in Dublin, Ireland and have lived in Maryland since 2003. I make interdisciplinary work that includes painting, drawing, poetry and video. I teach at The Maryland Institute College of Art and Harford Community College. I have shown work extensively in Baltimore, Washington DC. Philadelphia and New York as well as Ireland and Northern Ireland. I received my BFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2000 and my MFA from MICA… more

Dried up Puddles Memories

My work is concerned with light, shadow, color, material and perception. Using drawing, painting, video, poetry and installation I ask questions like, what do we see when we pay attention? And how can color, light and shadow effect our perception of form, space and material? I explore color as a subject in itself. There is also an interest in the associations that can arise from the application of sparse and reductive painterly techniques.
 
It seems natural to seek to understand the gestalt or the whole of our experience with the world. How do we occupy space? How accurate are our perceptions compared with the true nature of reality? Such a desire however limits and frustrates us. As finite creatures our faculties of perception grow, develop, and deteriorate over time. Even at our sharpest we influenced by countless factors relating to environment, culture and our place in history. A claim to truly know or understand seems at best arrogant and at worst extremely dangerous. I try to understand the ever- shifting relationship between what we perceive and what we claim to know.
 
Some work begins in childhood memories. Paintings and poems rooted in emotions, people and places as they meander around present world events and life in 21st century America. They consider territory, ownership, politics and landscape. My dear friend and mentor Renee Van der Stelt has pointed out that they are whatever arises on a given day. The present evokes the past. A rainy afternoon, a vivid dream or a chance encounter with a total stranger, suggest new ways to describe the experiences that shape me.
 
Personal content moves, rises and falls. It becomes color, line or verse. It forgets and remembers its original intention as it leaves a door open for the next moment, always in a state of becoming. Action comes from impulse, the need to capture, before it moves on. Tomorrow’s painting and poem will be entirely different. Bound to the past, while aspiring to mindfulness of the present, I seek the instantaneous and the static, the slow and the moving all at once, with a hope to articulate something of these ever- shifting states.
 
 
  • Calling Quietly.jpg
    Calling Quietly.jpg
  • Corner Installation Shot.jpg
    Corner Installation Shot.jpg
  • Dried up Puddle's Memories.jpg
    Dried up Puddle's Memories.jpg
  • Hardly Dead Sea Scolls.jpg
    Hardly Dead Sea Scolls.jpg
  • Hopeful Destiny.jpg
    Hopeful Destiny.jpg
  • Installation Shot.jpg
    Installation Shot.jpg
  • Now like an answer.jpg
    Now like an answer.jpg
  • Recalled at a Whim.jpg
    Recalled at a Whim.jpg
  • To all of these things.jpg
    To all of these things.jpg
  • Settle the Differences.jpg
    Settle the Differences.jpg

Poems from the Mountains

This body of work was exhibited at Harford Community College in the Spring of 2017. The works are all directly linked to a series of poems I wrote. The poems were read in front of the work at the exhibition opening,
  • 03.Poems from the Mountains Installation Shot.jpg
    03.Poems from the Mountains Installation Shot.jpg
  • 04.Only on Tuesdays (The Piano Says Love).jpg
    04.Only on Tuesdays (The Piano Says Love).jpg
  • 05.Brehon's Chair.jpg
    05.Brehon's Chair.jpg
  • 08.jpg
    08.jpg
  • Poems from the Mountains-3.jpg
    Poems from the Mountains-3.jpg
  • 09.jpg
    09.jpg
  • Sewn in the Weave.jpg
    Sewn in the Weave.jpg