John Hartman (born April 13, 1950) is a Canadian painter and printmaker based in Ontario.
Career
John Hartman, born in
Midland, Ontario
Midland is a town located on Georgian Bay in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada. It is part of the Huronia/Wendat region of Central Ontario.
Located at the southern end of Georgian Bay's 30,000 Islands, Midland is the economic centre of the region, ...
, was raised on the southern and eastern shores of Georgian Bay.
[ ] In the process of obtaining a degree at
McMaster University
McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...
in Hamilton which he finished in 1973, he took courses in fine art from instructor George Wallace who was enthusiastic about German
Expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
. He also was friendly with
David Blackwood
David Lloyd Blackwood (November 7, 1941 – July 2, 2022) was a Canadian artist known chiefly for his intaglio prints, often depicting dramatic historical scenes of Newfoundland outport life and industry, such as shipwrecks, seal hunting, ic ...
, then an art instructor, whom he had met when he attended Camp Hurontario, a boys’ camp. The poet
Douglas LePan
Douglas Valentine LePan (25 May 1914 – 27 November 1998) was a Canadian diplomat, poet, novelist and professor of literature.
Life
Born in Toronto, Ontario, LePan was educated at the University of Toronto, at Harvard (where he also tau ...
was also a friend and mentor.
Work
Hartman has said that the artists who inspired him include figures from art history such as
J. M. W. Turner,
Albrecht Altdorfer
Albrecht Altdorfer (12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg, Bavaria. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Danube Sc ...
,
Chaïm Soutine
Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Belarusian painter who made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living and working in Paris.
Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the ...
,
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense Expressionism, expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the ...
and in Canada,
David Milne and the
Group of Seven
The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is official ...
, among others. In his art, he has favored an aerial view of the land, even renting planes to see the impact humans have made on landscape – their histories and memories. He sees cities as living organisms, combined with their geography so his narrative is a complex mixture.
In 2007, he said:
One of the things which astonished me was realizing the ways in which my Western civilization tended to regard itself as separate from the land, when it would have been much healthier to have conceived of the world as the Aboriginals do – as a huge and constantly changing organism and ourselves as part of it.
Hartman's work has been discussed by critics along with that of
David T. Alexander
David T. Alexander (born January 13, 1947) is a Canadian painter, known for breathing new life into the landscape tradition of Canada as well as for working in a serious and ambitious manner to reinvigorate the contemporary practice of landscap ...
and others. He has been called an artist who, in the "true tradition of Canadian painters, is not afraid of visiting the far-flung edges of this country, pursuing subjects, painting them in his edgy style".
His works are in the collections of many public galleries such as the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg;
Museum London, Ontario; the
Robert McLaughlin Gallery
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public art gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest public art gallery in the Regional Municipality of Durham, of which Oshawa is a part. The gallery houses a significant collection of Canadian conte ...
, Oshawa; the
Winnipeg Art Gallery
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collect ...
; and elsewhere.
Selected exhibitions
Although Hartman has a lengthy exhibition history beginning with a solo exhibition at Trinity College, University of Toronto, in 1972, and with many shows nationally and internationally, largely in the 1980s,
[John Hartman: The Columbia in Canada, Kelowna Art Gallery, 2012, Selected Biography.] it took ''Painting the Bay: Recent Work by John Hartman'' at the
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection (MCAC) is an art museum in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located on a property in Kleinburg, an unincorporated village in Vaughan. The property includes the museum's main building, a sculpture garde ...
in 1993, large-scale paintings of Georgian Bay, aerial views of thickly-painted landscape, to bring him to critical attention. In the skies of this series, Hartman painted stories about the places he depicted to achieve his concept of the land as being more than mere landscape.
Hartman continued to receive national exposure with the exhibition and book ''Big North: The Paintings of John Hartman'', a major exhibition of Hartman`s works, organized by
Museum London
Museum London is an art and history museum located in London, Ontario, Canada. It is located near the forks of the Thames River. It started its operations in 1940 with London Public Library and amalgamated with London Regional Art Gallery and Lon ...
and the Tom Thomson Art Gallery which toured Canada between 1999 and 2002.
In 2003, he began to paint aerial views of cities as living organisms. These paintings made up the exhibition and book ''Cities'' curated by Stuart Reid which toured Canada and internationally from 2007 to 2009. In 2014, the Woodstock Art Gallery organized ''John Hartman: Many Lives Mark This Place'' with a book by
Ian M. Thom
Ian M. Thom (born 1952) is a Canadian curator, author, and art historian, well known for his exhibitions and major catalogues and books on Canadian Art and international art. In his 30-year duration (broken twice by appointments elsewhere) at the ...
, an exhibition of a series of 30 portraits of Canadian authors and the places that were important to them. The show travelled to the McMichael Canadian Art Gallery and elsewhere.
Honours and awards
He is a member of the
Royal Canadian Academy
The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) is a Canadian arts-related organization that was founded in 1880.
History 1880 to 1890
The title of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was received from Queen Victoria on 16 July 1880. The Governor General ...
.
In 2020, he received the
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit.
To coincide with the ...
.
The John Hartman Award from the
MacLaren Art Centre
The MacLaren Art Centre is an art gallery and museum, located in Barrie, Ontario, Canada.
It is named in honour of Maurice MacLaren, who bequeathed his Victorian home, Maple Hill, to the Barrie Gallery Project in 1989. The MacLaren Art Centre l ...
in Barrie, ON was established in 2016. In 2018,
Olivia Whetung Olivia Whetung is a contemporary artist, printmaker, writer, and member of the Curve Lake First Nation and citizen of the Nishnaabe, Nishnaabeg Nation.
Education
Whetung completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Anishinaabemowin at Algoma ...
received the award.
Personal life
John Hartman lives and has his studio in Lafontaine, Ontario.
Record sale prices
At Waddington`s Canadian Fine Art Auction, November 13–18, 2021, Hartman`s ''Manitou Dock'', 1993, a diptych, 182.9 x 304.8 cms, illustrated in John Hartman and Jean Blodgett, ''Painting the Bay: Recent Work by John Hartman'' (McMichael Canadian Art Collection:
Kleinburg, Ontario, 1993) on page 25, estimated at $10,000-15,000, realized a price of $40,800.
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartman, John
1950 births
Living people
Landscape artists
20th-century Canadian painters
21st-century Canadian painters
Canadian landscape painters
Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts
Members of the Order of Canada
Canadian painters