Rick Bartow was a prolific Native American artist and blues and rock musician who lived and worked primarily in Newport, Oregon. He was a member of the Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians, an indigenous tribe of northern California, and maintained close ties with the Siletz tribe. Bartow was born on December 16, 1946 and died on April 2, 2016 from congestive heart failure.

In 1969, Bartow earned a Bachelor of Arts in secondary art education from Western Oregon State, now known as Western Oregon University. Before he could begin teaching, he was drafted into the Vietnam War, where he served from 1969 to 1971 as a teletype operator and musician in military hospitals. His traumatic military service experiences often influenced his art and music.

Bartow's art career began with exhibitions at galleries in Newport, Oregon. In 1985 he was selected for a solo exhibition at Jamison/Thomas Gallery in Portland, Oregon. He exhibited at Jamison's galleries in Portland and New York until Jamison's death in 1995. Bartow was then represented by Charles Froelick of Froelick Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Bartow's work can be found in museum collections throughout the United States including the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana; the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC; the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon; the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona; the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon; and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon.

Bartow worked in a variety of media and created small and large scale art. His 26-foot tall carving The Cedar Mill Pole was displayed in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden at the White House in 1997. Bartow's pair of 20-foot tall cedar sculptures We Were Always Here were commissioned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Dedicated on September 21, 2012, the sculptures are on display on the northwest corner of the museum overlooking the National Mall, across from the Washington Monument.

Bartow's 35-year career as an artist was celebrated through the retrospective exhibition "Things You Know But Cannot Explain," which traveled through various museums in the United States from 2015 to 2019. This exhibition opened in April 2015 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon and continued to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; North Dakota Museum Of Art In Grand Forks, North Dakota; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; Washington State University in Pullman, Washington; The Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho; the Schingoethe Center of Aurora University Aurora, Illinois; the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, California; the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon; and the C. N. Gorman Museum at UC Davis, Davis, California.