Jack L. Bartlett was born in Orange, Texas in 1945, the third of three children. When he was a young boy he lived across the road from a dense forest near the Gulf Coast of Texas. His earliest memories are of exploring the woods and observing its wildlife. It was an elder sister who encouraged him to develop his interest in visual art and later in writing.

Mr. Bartlett is an accomplished artist as well as poet and writer. He is a Professor of Art (retired) at Mississippi State University. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Stephen F. Austin State University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University. Additionally he studied art in Mexico at the Instituto Allende, and he was a resident at the Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences in Georgia.

His continued interest in the outdoors, hiking, camping, canoeing, fishing and his love of the entire wilderness experience has been captured in his art and his writing. Many of his poems and paintings were created while visiting in the Rockies, the Smoky Mountains, or along beaches stretching from Maine to the Gulf Coast of Texas. He has traveled extensively across the United States and has traveled and worked in central Mexico and southwestern France.

Currently Mr. Bartlett lives on a lake in East Texas, with his wife, Sandra, and their Airedale terrier, Phoebe. He often takes his canoe out on the lake just after daybreak or at sunset. There he paints and writes about the world he sees. He feels a special kinship with the land in East Texas. His ancestors moved there in the 19th Century, some from Alabama and others from Georgia. His great-great-grandfather, a Confederate soldier, is buried a few miles from his current residence. Another ancestor was an early settler of East Texas, where his home site is commemorated by an historical marker.

Mr. Bartlett’s artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe and is included in numerous private collections. Publications by Mr. Bartlett include New Dreams, Poetry Anthology, 1984, Fine Arts Press, Potpourri International; Drawing Workbook: A studio Manual, 1990; Kendall Hunt Publishing, and Words of Joy, 1992, Archive of the Arts.