Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce Georgian Bay: Portraits from the Shoreline, an exhibition of new paintings by John Hartman. The exhibition will open on October 16 and will be on view through November 8 with a reception for the artist on Thursday, October 16 from 6– 8 PM.
John Hartman is one of Canada’s most noted artists, renown for his lusciously painted aerial landscapes and cityscapes. Hartman has traveled worldwide to paint places as diverse as New York, London, Shanghai, Toronto, New Orleans, Vancouver and Newfoundland, however it is his home landscape of Georgian Bay that he is most inspired by and frequently returns to.
Earlier this year, Hartman conceived of painting the entire eastern shoreline of Georgian Bay in one continuous strip. Using memory and maps, he recorded in watercolour, the south end of the Bay to the French River. As Hartman painted, he illustrated a who’s who of writers, artists, friends, residents and events into the corresponding landscape, creating a personal and factual visual account of the last 100 years of life on Georgian Bay.
Once the watercolour was completed, Hartman went on to create a series of oil paintings using segments of the sketchbook. In oil, the portraits are dramatic, larger than life and surrounded by narrative clues about their place in the history of Georgian Bay. The first painting Hartman completed in the series was a large, round head of Andy Trudeau. Hartman spent a winter with Trudeau on the Bay and his vivid memories from this period are recorded on top of the landscape in the background.
This exhibition marks the first time portraits have been predominant in Hartman’s work. The bold brushwork and distorted scale evokes a long time artistic influence for Hartman, Philip Guston. The integration of portraits and landscape also conveys the symbiotic relationship we share with the places we inhabit, an understanding that has always been at the core of Hartman’s vision.
I am an avid collector of books, stories and historic photographs about the landscapes that interest me. I have sketched the people who live on Georgian Bay and listened to their stories since 1974. Every summer since 1985, I have returned to the same landscape south of Britt to paint. My formative years at Camp Shawanaga have been a continuing source of ideas for my paintings. These are the constituent parts of my new paintings. I now realize that I have been gathering them together throughout my entire career.
- John Hartman, 2014
John Hartman has exhibited extensively in Canada as well as in New York, New Orleans and London, England. His work was the subject of two widely acclaimed travelling museum exhibitions, CITIES (2007 – 2010) and Big North (1999-2001). Collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. This is Hartman’s fifth exhibition at the gallery.
