“My experience of a place is generated over a continuum of time and by seeing it from many viewpoints.”
John Hartman’s latest series portrays cities as an extension of his earlier landscape paintings—works that are animated with a strong expressionistic style and imagery of local historic events and personal narratives. Hartman’s new paintings of major port cities in Canada, the United States and Northern Europe have a rich and rewarding presence where intense colour, light, dark, texture and movement are held in exquisite balance. Hartman’s paintings are found in numerous public, corporate and private collections in Canada and around the world.
In addition Hartman will have solo shows in London and New York this fall. Currently touring museums across Canada is a survey of eighteen paintings organized and circulated by the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery and accompanied by a hard-cover book. The exhibition, currently at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, has toured the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Calgary and is coming to the University of Toronto Art Centre in February 2008.
The book Cities: John Hartman is available and features a foreword by Dennis Reid, Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario and essays by curator Stuart Reid and author Noah Richler.
