Returning to his roots: Artist’s attention turns from Big Apple experience to environment

PALMER TWP., Pa. — Inside his makeshift basement studio, artist James Bartolacci stands next to his adorable chihuahua-mix, Baby, and points to a palette of bright reds, oranges, yellows and blues.

Later on, he’ll mix the hues to find the perfect fluorescent to fill the canvas for a series of works that memorialize New York City’s rich history of gay nightlife.

Hometown ties

Bartolacci lived in New York City for 12 years after graduating from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2012.

However, his family’s ties to the area date back to the early 20th century.

His late grandfather, Leonard Bartolacci Sr., founded Laneco Groceries in 1946, and his mother, Shelly Bartolacci, worked for the Easton Area School Districtfor years as a teacher and basketball coach.

For a little more than two decades, James was living New York City, minus the two years he earned his master’s degree in fine arts from Yale Art School.

Post-pandemic life in Brooklyn proved to be fiscally challenging, so Bartolacci decided to move back home.

He now paints and lives in a basement studio in the lower level of his maternal grandparents’ home, not far from his parents’ residence in Easton.

“It’s helpful to be here and not have all the distractions of the city and to spend time with my grandparents at their later stages in life. I feel like I’m connecting with them more and my family,” he said.

He’s also reacquainted with a slew of high school buddies — all eager to hear stories of life in the Big Apple.

Capturing the light

Bartolacci’s eye-catching abstract creations are dramatic, enticing and meant to emulate a night on the town.

But look close enough, and you’ll sense his subjects’ desire to live authentically.

It’s evident in Bartolacci’s color usage and his subjects’ body movements and facial expressions.

“When I was starting to paint and looking at art in galleries and shows in New York, I noticed that a lot of them were using kind of more modern colors, but also older colors. It was nice but looked kind of, like, flat,” Bartolacci said.

“Because I was painting nightlife, I wanted to figure out how to make my colors as bright and bold and saturated as you see in the queer club scene in the city. I looked at color as kind of like this loud, really bold color, as almost like a reflection of people living their lives out loud as queer people.

“I wanted colors that are so bold and so loud in your face, though not make you hate it. So I kind of saw it as like this connection between just trying to live your life out loud as yourself in a way.”

His paintings have been featured in three solo shows: “Saudade,” at Taymour Grahne Projects in London in 2023; “Time to Leave,” at Anat Ebgi Gallery in Los Angeles in 2022; and “Life Without Night,” at the Taymour Grahne Projects in London in 2021.

Bartolacci’s work was also part of a collaboration with Artsy, dubbed “Public Displays of Queer Affection,” in 2022. The public campaign was featured at a digital screen in Times Square and on subway stations in New York City.

Some of the subjects for his first show were photographed during the pandemic (as with most works, Bartolacci first takes a photo with his cell phone, then later puts them to canvas).

“They look somber and a little sad, but also having these beautiful outfits on and enjoying the kind of bedroom space. I photograph them, I talked to them — we put up like different lighting colors to kind of make it like a club,” he said.

“For the second show, I tried to abstract the figures, to make spaces that were like harder to see or understand. I highlighted more emotions, melancholy or loneliness that you often find in clubs too, that aren’t as palatable. I didn’t want to just paint joyous, happy people dancing all the time. I wanted to capture everything.”

Grant-winner, art exhibition abroad

His last untitled series — intimate portraits of DJs, nightclub organizers and artists he met through the club scene in New York — will be part of an upcoming exhibition at the Galerie Thomas Fuchs in Stuttgart, Germany.

To help fund the project, Bartolacci applied for an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. The foundation, based in Canada, supports figurative and representational artists.

He was awarded almost $13,000 in June.

“This last series may be my last nightlife series, at least for awhile. I’m here in Easton and don’t go to clubs as much as I used to,” he said. “I think that’s a really hard thing for artists in time is like, you have things you wanna paint that are not the typical subject matter and you can’t, because you have the attention of what you were painting before.”

Instead, he wants to shift his focus to issues such as the affluent’s use of carbon-hungry activities — things like private jets and luxury mansions.

“It’s symbolic to me of the disconnect between that lifestyle and, like, what extravagance and wealth and accumulating resources and everything is doing to our environment,” Bartolacci said. “I would like to concentrate on stuff where it’s this kind of hypocrisy between our lifestyles and what it’s doing to the planet.”