LIVING CITIES: The paintings of John Hartman

On now through Sunday at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Mar. 5 to Apr. 22, 2007

John Hartman, Owen Sound, 2005. Image: tomthomson.org

The city is usually known as a pulsing, living space containing the grey and the dark, the vibrant and the diverse. As depicted in the current show at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the city displays a new voice. John Hartman paints a fusion of the roiling energy of the city and a fantastical candy land of bubble gum hills and lavender sugar drop skies. This show, entitled Cities, covers two floors of the gallery with Hartman’s vibrant large-scale oil paintings on linen, many on multiple panels.

John Hartman, Halifax, 2006. Image: metiviergallery.com

The most prominent of these large works is the painting Halifax (2006, oil on linen) commissioned by Scotiabank Group to showcase the city’s rich and diverse cultural heritage. Hartman’s unusual palette sets the city aglow with bright red bridges spanning lavender waterways and vibrant oranges, subdued greens, and pure white dotting the landscape. Epic in scale, Halifax is shown from a distorted vantage point, as if from a high mountaintop as well as off into the distance, which the curvature of the horizon indicates. This distortion of perspective brings together the diverse areas in and around Halifax, from the Bedford Basin to Halifax Harbour and Point Pleasant Park. The eye is drawn into the space as the gestural flow of Hartman’s brushstrokes create the unsettling effect of a bubbling maritime metropolis. The artist brings the city to a visual peak representing the Halifax Explosion of 1917 - he has created an ethereal mountain of cloud hovering above the buildings and roads. Through imagination and history, the effect is as if every building, every boat and dock have been attended to, with quick and knowing swathes of colour representing the smokestacks, bridges and ships of this city.

John Hartman, Halifax Study, 2006. Image: metiviergallery.com

Though Halifax boasts an obvious appeal to locals, the entire show is rich with the painterly skill that Hartman is known for. In each painting, landmarks and land masses are recognizable and are simply titled - as with Vancouver, Montreal, New York (all 2006) - yet baroquely executed.

Notations and figures dot the skies of some works, reading more like inner landscapes informed loosely by their physical counterparts, as with the west coast blues and violets exaggerated in the painting Vancouver. Hartman seems to revel in the liberty of his unique voice and perspective, infusing these epic landscapes with personal touches such as figures, words and surreal colours. His city is a multifaceted and human place, pulsing with life yet bathed in both light and darkness.

John Hartman, Bourchier Island, Shore Range, 2005. Image: metiviergallery.com

In another work, entitled Owen Sound (2005, oil on linen), Hartman has flattened out the perspective even further, folding it straight down from a long-range horizon view. Near the top of the canvas, the red-orange land falls sharply away and deep blue water funnels down into the city’s grid, the city as seen from a bird’s eye view. The weight of the dark river cuts sharp like lightning down through the land, creating a floating feeling overhead. The painting glows with sunset hues; flaming colours lighting the land and clouds from the left, while the water remains dull and murky due to the low angle of the sun.

John Hartman, Calgary, 2005. Image: monoloco.com

This comprehensive exhibition of contemporary landscape paintings provides a window into Hartman’s working process. On display are sketches and notations taken directly from Hartman’s sketchbooks. It also lets us see how his approach diverges from the more conservative and typically representational paintings of times past. Small watercolour paintings and pencil drawings are simplified renderings of the places Hartman has seen in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. They show the different views, notes, and colour schemes which the artist eventually merges to create his dynamic entryways into landscape.

John Hartman, Lower Manhattan, 2006. Image: metivergallery.com

A curatorial curiosity is the expressionistic and almost wholly abstract painting Looking East to the Martyr’s Shrine, Wrecking the Midland Simcoe (1992). The work stands awardly apart from the show - It is of a different time in the artist’s career and in a completely different style than the others. With paint colours straight from the tube and mixed on the canvas, this thick impasto painting renders the landscape almost unrecognizable. In fact, its presence works counter to the other pieces in the show. It disrupts an otherwise comprehensive survey of Hartman’s recent works.

John Hartman, The Thames from Swiss Re, 2005. Image: metiviergallery.com

Despite this, the rest of the show presents a defiantly personal freedom of imagination. Hartman’s relationship with the land and his generous, balanced use of colour-ethereal pastels against rich earth tones-create for the viewer an ethereal, child-like wonderland.

Hartman’s work is a refreshing departure from the tradition of Canadian landscape painting which may be read as an attempt to counter the heavy hand of industry. The paintings do not suggest critique but rather an obvious reverence, depicting the city as rough, raw and throbbing, as though it is the heart of the human landscape, drawing a strong connection between the human experience and the land as a living being, central to our urban lives.

John Hartman is represented by the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.

-Reviewed by Sol Legault

Sol Legault is an undergrad student at NSCAD University, Halifax, focusing on photography and drawing.