[Narrator] This is Things You Know But Cannot Explain by Rick Bartow.

He created it in 1979, and you can see the elements that would go on to define his work.

The emotion, the raw, aggressive style, the eraser marks, the darkness.

Flash forward, and he would be known for pieces like this and this.

He even had an installation in the garden of the White House.

Bartow went from a small-town Oregon kid to having his work in the collections of over 100 museums across the country.

He's not just a big deal in Northwest art, but American art as a whole.

But all of this almost didn't happen.

(gentle music) Bartow was born in Newport, Oregon in 1946.

His father was from the Mad River Band of the Wiyot Indians in Northern California.

His mother was white.

He started making art early in life, encouraged by his aunt Bartow graduated college with a degree in art education, but that same year, he was drafted into the Vietnam War where he served as a teletype operator and a musician in military hospitals.

(somber music) He saw the horrors of the Vietnam War firsthand, and it disturbed him deeply.

(somber music continues) - [Rick] I received a Bronze Star, basically, I think, for playing guitar in the hospitals on my time off.

The only thing heroic that I know I ever did was play music for people who were sick and dying.

And in horrible pain.

- [Narrator] Bartow came home in 1971, suffering from what we now call PTSD.

He felt guilty for surviving when so many others didn't.

He lost nearly a decade to alcohol and drug addiction.

But in the early 70s, he met an elder with the nearby Siletz Tribe, who taught him traditional practices like the sweat lodge and helped him reconnect with the natural world.

And Bartow kept making art all the time.

- [Rick] I could only afford graphite at the time, and that made a black drawing and a white sheet of paper.

But in the end, what a wonderful spiritual sort of symbol.

You know, light and dark.

You know, it's the dance, you know?

- Over time, he's dealing with mortality and death and grieving.

Sometimes there are self-portraits where you see a skull behind him, or you see the skull within him.

- [Narrator] This became Bartow's path.

- [Rick] Yeah, plain and simple.

I drew myself straight.

Not only from PTSD stuff, but also from alcoholism.

(graphite rustling) - [Kathleen Ash-Milby] I do think there is a raw emotional quality to his work, especially his works on paper.

When you see the marks that he makes, it is almost as if he was attacking the surface of the paper.

(hand moving graphite) He didn't seem like he planned his work.

It really feels very spontaneous.

If there was something he didn't like, he would cross it out.

- I can spiral all around.

I can do anything I want because it's my drawing.

But I really like these eyes, the way they were working.

There's something going on there.

(pencil rustling) - He was not shy about expressing things about himself that, you know, might be considered dark or ugly.

(introspective music) (music continues) He was just being who he was, and that was a complex person who dealt with a lot of tragedy and probably made some decisions that he regretted and wasn't afraid to show that to the world through his work.

(music continues) - [Narrator] In some pieces, Bartow erased almost as much as he drew.

(music continues) - [Bartow] Hmm.

- [Narrator] He said, "I use erasure because my life has been shaped as much by what I have lost as by what I have gained."

(introspective music continues) Bartow lost his father when he was five.

He witnessed countless deaths in Vietnam.

His first wife died 12 years into their marriage.

He recorded these losses and his own transformations in an ongoing series of self-portraits.

(soft plucky music) - [Kathleen] Artist Upset Self is a very good example of one of his self portraits.

You can recognize him immediately from the glasses he's wearing, and the shape of his nose.

He is frowning and his face is kind of emerging from a dark background.

(music continues) But in other cases, I think that he is using animal imagery to express some part of himself.

There's one work on paper in particular called Alpha My Anger, and it is a dog, and it's kind of viciously snarling at the viewer.

I see that as a self portrait, as well.

He really identified with the character of Coyote, who is a trickster figure in a lot of Native American stories.

You know, you sometimes see these animals transforming back and forth from human to beast.

(uplifting music) - [Rick] Well, then it begins that blending where people get caught saying, oh, are you a shamanic artist?

No, I'm just an artist who thinks that people and animals share the same bed.

(soft music continues) And if the bed isn't comfortable for them, it's not gonna be comfortable for us very long.

(hammer tapping) - [Kathleen] I think he was a magnificent sculptor.

Dog Pack is a collection of three dog sculptures.

(jazzy music) They have kind of this gnarly look to them, but when you look up close, you think, maybe they're not so bad.

Maybe they're just street dogs that might be misunderstood.

(music continues) He really had a gift for creating these animals that almost seemed like they could be alive.

(music continues) He definitely was influenced by other Native American artists and Native American art traditions, but he was influenced by many artists in the Western canon as well.

- [Narrator] Artists like Frances Bacon, Cy Twombly, Richard Diebenkorn.

- [Kathleen] I think you could see influences by Goya specifically in his work.

There is even a painting that references Goya by name.

- [Narrator] As his work progressed, his paintings and drawings grew larger, more colorful.

(bright music) In 1997, his carving, The Cedar Mill Pole, was installed at the White House.

He followed that up in 2012 with a piece called, We Were Always Here, now a permanent installation in Washington, DC.

(bright music) In 2013, he suffered a major stroke, forcing him to relearn how to speak and how to paint.

- [Kathleen] So Sing Crow was a painting that was done not long after this experience.

There's a figure that's hunched over.

It's not really a comfortable work to look at.

(bright music continues) I don't think that his health problems ever kept him from continuing to express himself through art.

Being able to continue to make work as long as he could to almost the end of his life was quite important.

- [Narrator] Bartow's health issues continued, and in 2016, he died of congestive heart failure.

Since that time, his stature in the art world has only increased.

Major museums continue to acquire his work every year.

In 2024, San Francisco's deYoung Museum acquired The Magical Mind In Rural America.

18 feet wide and six feet tall, it's the largest piece Bartow ever created.

- [Kathleen] I do think that he felt like he was leaving a mark and leaving evidence of who he was, and I don't know if he was really thinking about the far future and how his work would be viewed by so many other people.

I almost think that for someone like Rick, his success might have even been somewhat of a surprise.

I feel like his work was so introspective for so long that he was really making it for himself.

- [Rick] Suddenly, I realized the Creator had given me something to do, and whether people understood that now didn't matter.

I have to do this.

This is my job.

If I don't want to, I can turn my back and it'll go someplace else.

You know, you'll do it, or you'll do it, or you'll do it.

Somebody else will do it.

But if I want to, here's my gift and I can use it today.

(bright music continues) (no audio)