Escape Artists
Georgia painters find peace, and plenty of inspiration, on a remote Penobscot Bay island
Like yin and yang, realist painter Bo Bartlett and abstract painter Betsy Eby are opposites working in perfect harmony. But the dualism extends beyond their art, to the two paradoxical locations they choose to practice it — Bartlett’s native Columbus, Georgia, in winter, and, in summer, a tiny island 23 miles off the coast of Port Clyde, in Maine.
With nothing between Wheaton and Portugal except that tempestuous sea, Eby admits theirs is “an impractical love affair with real estate.” But she says her encaustic paintings, created using resins and fire, benefit from the seclusion and unbridled gestures when she’s here. “That energy and those rhythms get into my paintings,” says Eby, a classically trained pianist who also practices at her studio piano every day.
