Bartfield is not an Outsider artist in the strictest sense of the term—she holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin and has benefited from extensive formal training. Nonetheless, her artistic practice can neither be reduced to a set of formal influences, nor understood only in relation to the contemporary art scene. Rather, for decades, and often at a distance from the goings-on of the art world, Bartfield has been persistently mapping an altogether unique aesthetic universe.