John Hartman is one of Canada’s preeminent painters. He is known for his rich, vibrant depictions of the country’s most iconic landscapes. Hartman’s prolific practice includes oil painting, watercolour, pastel, and printmaking.
Hartman notes that his aerial viewpoints originate from his childhood dreams of flying; imagining the landscape unfurling like a roll of film below him. A recurrent setting in John Hartman’s practice has been the blue waters of Georgian Bay: “the Bay is my home landscape. It defines my sense of space, light and scale.” In his large-scale works, Hartman dedicates attention to the minutest of details, from people on the ground to boats flitting through massive expanses of blue water. It is in this desire to intertwine people and place where Hartman deviates from the tradition of Canadian landscape painting, a subject that he is deeply knowledgeable about. He is an aficionado on the work of David Milne and his invention of the colour drypoint etching, a medium which Hartman is now highly regarded for as well.
Hartman has exhibited extensively in Canada as well as in New York, New Orleans and London, England. His work was the subject of three widely acclaimed travelling museum exhibitions, Many Lives Mark This Place (2020 - 2024) organized and circulated by the Woodstock Art Gallery, CITIES (2007-2010), and Big North (1999-2001). Collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax. In 2024, Hartman received his appointment to the Order of Canada.