many lives mark this place
John Hartman
September 19 - November 19, 2022
John Hartman has long been interested in the connection between people and place. With this body of work, he has captured the intimate relationship Canadian authors have with their personal places of inspiration. Authors possess the magic to create portraits of characters and places in the mind’s eye of their readers. By evoking the unique identity of a particular setting, authors can shape the reader’s understanding and associations to a place, even if wholly imagined.
Hartman’s own reading interests directed his first choices of authors to paint. As the project grew in scope, so did the list of authors. The authors, in turn, chose the landscape backdrops of their portraits, places that were important to each of them—cities, towns and wilderness from Tofino, British Columbia, to Elliston, Newfoundland. Hartman then asked each author to write about the place in their portrait. The resulting portraits and stories have been published in the accompanying book.
This project celebrates the richness of Newfoundland and Canada’s literary fabric. It also speaks to the power of the imagination, and the diverse and striking landscapes that link us all together.
This exhibition is accompanied by the book, Many Lives Mark This Place, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Each author has contributed a short piece of writing describing how a specific place has influenced their life and work. Esteemed senior curator, Ian M. Thom, has written the introduction and John Hartman’s own musings on the engagement with each author is included. The book is available for sale through the Gallery.
This exhibition has been organized and circulated by the Woodstock Art Gallery, a division of the Culture Department of the City of Woodstock, Ontario.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1950, John Hartman grew up in Midland, Ontario. He studied Fine Art at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Hartman first established his reputation with the exhibition Painting by the Bay at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 1993. These large-scale paintings of Georgian Bay depicted aerial views of the landscape, painted with thick, juicy paint. In the skies, Hartman painted stories about the places represented. Hartman continued to experiment with works that combined figurative, narrative and landscape.
He received national exposure with the exhibition and book Big North, which toured Canada between 1999 and 2002. Hartman’s path of painting, inspired by the intimate and intertwined relationship between people and place, took a turn in 2003.
He began to paint aerial views of cities as living organisms. These paintings composed the exhibition and book CITIES, which toured nationally and internationally from 2007 to 2009.
Starting in 2014, Hartman began to turn his focus towards the representation of portraiture with the landscape moving to a supporting backdrop. His most recent series centres on Canadian authors who share the gift of creating a visual manifestation of a place in the mind’s eye of their readers.
Hartman’s artwork is represented in the collections of over 40 museums and public art galleries across Canada, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, and abroad in the British Museum; the Royal Library, Copenhagen; the Masterworks Museum in Bermuda; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. To date, he has had seven books published on his artwork, many exhibition catalogues produced, and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and reviews printed.
Over his career, Hartman has won numerous awards. He was a winner of the “Editions 1” printmaking competition of the Ontario Arts Council. In 1994, he was awarded the distinguished Alumni Award in the Arts from McMaster University. In 1995, Hartman was the first winner of the Great Canadian Printmaking Competition. He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2002. In 2012, he was awarded the “Excellence in Arts” award by the City of Barrie. He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2021.