John Hartman - New Orleans

John Hartman is my favorite artist. I can say that unconditionally. Sometime around 1994, I was in Medical School in Toronto and was visiting some private galleries downtown and walked into what I'd consider the most important show I had attended. It was Big North by John Hartman. It is the first time I had ever heard of him and this was his breakthrough show. He was an accomplished and recognized artist for many years before this but after this show he had reached a new status.

On the walls were these large canvases with paintings of Northern Ontario towns. The images, colors and paint techniques were very striking and engaging. What really drew me in were these little vignettes in the landscape. There were figures and objects incorporated into the clouds and scenery. He happened to be there for a gallery talk that day which we had missed but I had to meet him. We spoke for a few minutes and talked about the narratives he put in his work. He gave an example to me on one of his paintings. It was a small town which was more of an outpost of sorts and when visiting there he had decided to hike up a nearby mountain. He had hiked and climbed for most of the day and finally came to a clearing overlooking the valley and town. As he sat there, he thought to himself that he might be the first white man that had ever been to this place. When he returned that evening he asked some of the locals about the spot and it turns out there had been a terrible plane crash there 30 years ago and 4 people had died on that spot. This became part of the painting through his narrative. These kinds of local legends and lore are the elements that really talked to me in John's work. He had an interest on how nature and landscape shaped the humans that lived in the area and how humans shaped the landscape around them. This is a theme he brought forward in his future works.

It was a few years before I could even contemplate purchasing a painting from John Hartman. I had spoken with him a few times on line over the years. After the Big North show he moved away from the narratives and started on a decade long exploration of cities. In these works he further explored the relationship of development on landscapes. Cities have an energy and a flow to them and this is one of the things John captures so well. I got this piece from one of his later Cities exhibits. It is a painting of Hong Kong from Kowloon. I had never been to either before I had this painting but my wife's family is from Hong Kong. I have since been and can understand the perspective and landmarks used in creating this image but even before that more literal understanding of the piece, there was a connection with the images and colors already.

This piece is important for another reason. When my father passed away, he left some money for my mother and eventually perhaps a little inheritance down the road. My mother wanted each of us three kids to take some of that money then. I didn't want money, I wanted something that meant something to me and so I had this purchased with that money. It is an important piece to me and now has an even deeper connection. My father would have loved Hong Kong.

My other piece by Hartman is a piece I bought a little over a year ago. I knew John was doing another show but I had heard he was reintroducing the narrative into his work. I knew I wanted another large canvas and so I started selling off some comic art to make sure I was in a position to make a play for a piece or two. I ended up with the New Orleans painting. The narrative in this series is more bold than what was done in Big North. For a painter from rural Northern Ontario, a connection with New Orleans seems like an unlikely pairing yet there was a chemistry there and several paintings came from this. In the piece I have there are a few stories including one of a funeral parade for a street trumpet musician.

I hope to one day add a Big North painting to my collection but in the 20 years I have been looking, none have come to the secondary market.