“The new paintings of John Hartman, one of Canada’s major contemporary painters, offer an artistic vision of cities as living organisms, deeply intertwined with the natural terrain of a geographic site. In Hartman’s new series the carbuncular accumulations of close houses and towers and cranes and docks and roads that we call cities are presented as their own natural formation.”
—from the exhibition catalogue CITIES: John Hartman
Capturing the vibrant colour produced by reflection and refraction of light off glass buildings and water, John Hartman incorporates various perspectives and angles to produce an organic and sensory representation of the city. In these paintings, bright open spaces of water and sky provide an interlude from the dark and swarming density of urban structures. This exhibition includes paintings of Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Paris, Edinburgh and London, as well as a new series of street views of Toronto and New York.
John Hartman’s paintings are found in numerous museum and corporate collections. Cities, a survey exhibition of recent paintings, recently completed a tour of eleven museums across Canada.
