The Old Port and Mount Royal, 2005

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto Private Collection, Montreal

A native of Midland, Ontario, John Hartman is one of Canada’s preeminent contemporary painters, known for his gestural depictions of Canada’s iconic landscapes. Hartman established his reputation with an exhibition at the McMichael Canadian Collection in 1993. The works exhibited included large-scale aerial views of Georgian Bay, painted with thick, shiny paint. The artist continued to experiment with works that combined figurative, narrative and landscape. In 2003 Hartman began to paint aerial views of cities - mostly Canadian, as well as some from the United States and Europe. Hartman depicted these cityscapes from unusual vantage points with distorted perspectives. Rarely are Montreal’s Old Port and Mount Royal featured together in a single landscape view, as they are in this painting. Thick, expressive brushwork is used to emphasize the city’s bustling energy and create a tactile surface that draws in the viewer. With spontaneous and gestural outlines and a creative colour palette, Hartman blurs the boundary between figurative and abstract. The painting serves as a contemporary blend of abstract expressionism with landscape painting - a refreshing and original position within the canon of Canadian art history.