Philip Barter Art

Philip Barter, born in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, in 1939, stands as a self-taught artist who navigated his craft without the confines of formal or academic art training. His passion for art, particularly drawing, ignited at an early age and was propelled by his intrinsic motivation. By his mid-teens, drawing evolved into a daily ritual for Barter. Over the years, he meticulously refined his artistic skills, and a transformative period in California during the early Sixties solidified his commitment to a career as a painter. By the 1980s, Philip Barter had ascended to become one of Maine's foremost regionalist painters. His body of work, numbering close to two thousand paintings, is scattered across the United States, Canada, and Europe, adorning both individual and corporate collections. In 1988, Barter's reputation as a distinguished regionalist folk-art painter and interpreter of Maine's Down East experience, predominantly conveyed through his narrative paintings, caught the attention of officials at Massachusetts' DeCordova Museum. Six of his narratives found a place in their traveling exhibition, "Stories to Tell: The Narrative Impulse in Contemporary New England Folk Art." This marked a pivotal moment for Barter, gaining significant exposure in a publication dedicated exclusively to the world of art and artists. In 1992, Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, paid homage to Philip Barter with his inaugural retrospective, recognizing his quarter-century contribution to the realm of Maine art...