Rebecca Gonzalez-Bartoli paints toward a brighter future

The new exhibition from Rebecca Gonzalez-Bartoli has its roots in an external hard drive the Columbus artist has had in her possession since she was a teenager, and which she was initially hesitant to revisit. Now deep into recovery, Gonzalez-Bartoli said the drive contained photographs and writings from a more challenging time in her life, preceding her diagnosis with schizoaffective disorder at age 20.

“And I had never touched [the hard drive] because it was scary,” said Gonzalez-Bartoli, who collected her artwork, journal entries, documents related to different hospitalizations, and other related ephemera on the drive beginning at age 15. “So, when I finally did, I was revisiting that headspace and everything I was going through back then. And I was laughing and crying, and it was such an emotional experience. But it was also healing, too. … It brought back a lot of things I didn’t want to think about, but I knew that in order to move forward, not only creatively with my art but emotionally, that I really had to sit down and face it.”

This decision roughly coincided with a point in time when Gonzalez-Bartoli, under the advisement and supervision of her doctor, began to wean off the antipsychotic medications she had been on for more than a decade, and which inspired a sensation the artist compared with “seeing in color for the first time.” 

“It was like I was really able to feel joy again,” said Gonzalez-Bartoli, whose latest exhibit opens at 934 Gallery today (Friday, April 18), along with new collections by fellow artists Laura Ellstrom and Aaron Sheldon. “And in that, I created like three new pieces in two months, because it was this onslaught of inspiration. It was like I was having dreams of these different paintings.”

While Gonzalez-Bartoli grew up with a deep interest in drawing, revealing that these sketches long existed as the sole space in which she could untangle or express the various complex emotions that sometimes knotted inside her, for years she refused to label herself an artist, plagued by a gnawing and relentless self-doubt that prevented her from considering it as a career path. This mindset began to shift when Gonzalez-Bartoli exhibited at Fresh A.I.R. Gallery in 2022, after which she enrolled in courses at the Cultural Arts Center, which she said intensified a growing belief in her abilities.

This blossoming is evident at 934 Gallery, with the darker, more technical works Gonzalez-Bartoli showed at Fresh A.I.R. giving way to more colorful recent pieces that are rooted in a greater sense of play. The half-dozen artworks on display at 934 Gallery, for instance, all started in crayon – a purposeful choice that Gonzalez-Bartoli said allowed her to tap into the spirit with which she first created as a child.

“I really feel like children’s art is so pure, because they’re not worried about being wrong or different, or creating something ugly. And I wanted to recapture that idea. … I liked the idea of being intuitive. And even when I used the spray paint, it wasn’t like, ‘Okay, I’m going to make a mark here and a mark here,’ it was, like, ‘I’m going to do this,’” said the artist, making broad, freestyle gestures with her arm. “And it was like the feeling was moving my hand. And it was almost spiritual in a way.”

The work at 934 is filled with all manner of similarly playful 1990s ephemera – Beanie Babies, Tamagotchi pets, and Campbell’s soup lunch boxes included – a byproduct of Gonzalez-Bartoli’s decision to revisit the hard drive filled with personal effects from the era. But the artist also leaned into some of the more painful memories rescued from the drive, such as hospitalization records, embedding them in the canvases and allowing certain documents and writings to bleed through to the surface like ghosts from the past.

Taken on the whole, these images represent both Gonzalez-Bartoli’s healing journey and a way to reclaim and redefine her childhood and teenage years. Prior to creating this series, the artist viewed her past with a more jaundiced eye, the accumulated traumas outshining and outstripping those moments of joy. These paintings serve to invert that idea, acknowledging the pain but allowing it to recede further into the backdrop, obscured by myriad colorful layers of crayons and paint.

“And the more layers I put on top of the good memories and the successes and the accomplishments, the more those dark times shift to the back, which helps me focus on moving forward. And that was the whole point. I wanted to move forward,” said Gonzalez-Bartoli, who credited the various supportive communities she has discovered since moving to Columbus about a decade ago with helping her along this path. “The journey I’ve been on in recovering from different things, it’s definitely impacted my art, and how I treat myself, treat others, and treat the world. And as I’ve gotten better, my art has gotten more playful and more free and more myself.”