The combination of encouragement and support from a loving husband, and the reawakening of creative urges spawned through extra time gifted during the pandemic, created the necessary space for Mary Hartman to finally hone her skills as an artist.
Despite having earned an MFA in Painting from SCAD in 1998, and despite subsequently enjoying a successful commissioned portraiture business, this softly spoken, thoughtful painter seems to have never quite felt good enough or skillful enough. A native of Charleston, WV, Hartman received her BA in Art History from Davidson College. She was accepted at SCAD in 1995 as a provisional student because her portfolio was so small, and perhaps, the title “provisional” engendered a temerity and tentativeness in accepting herself as the uniquely talented artist she has become.
Regardless, Hartman says that she always felt she lacked the complete knowledge of how to mix colors and the academic grounding to confidently compose a painting. As a result, for the last two and a half decades she has primarily shown monochromatic charcoal and pastel drawings on canvas and wood panels, sometimes with the addition of an acrylic wash. Never, until now, has she worked in oils and painted with color.
The work that most of us associate with Mary Hartman is suggestive, gestural, filled with feeling, and singularly sparse – stripped down to the barest essentials. In the artist statement on her website she says, “I try to keep in mind and in hand principles of movement and economy, speed and light, and appreciate interplay between illusory and non-illusory space and form. Rhythm matters a great deal - as does contrast between areas of quiet and activity.”
Since 1997 her pieces have appeared in numerous group shows and she has been given several solo shows at Gallery Espresso and at now defunct Savannah locations such as Starland Gallery, the iconic Sparetime, Bistro-Savannah, and the Sapphire Grill. She is best known for her spare charcoal portraits; her skillful portrayals of horses, cats, or rams; and for her still lifes of such every day and mundane objects as iron skillets, onions, or angular anvils, all of which somehow become imbued with an ethereal beauty under her skillful hand. Every piece’s subject is hinted at; its entire form is just the merest suggestion. Often, she uses a wood panel so that she can incorporate the swirling grain of the wood into the subject she is evoking.
Having formerly painted in a large studio space on MLK (which she shared with jewelry maker Meredith Sutton), Hartman recently set up her easel in the living room of her Avondale home after the MLK building was sold. On the day we meet, every surface in the light filled space is stacked with the portraits and still lifes that will soon be hung in a new solo show. We sit at a dining table in a room off the studio and discuss the new direction for her career…
Opening this Friday at Location, Hartman’s show Color & Size is her first solo exhibition in a decade. With prompting from the brilliant gallerist Peter Roberts, it is comprised of oil paintings on canvas or linen panels, and will, for the first time, incorporate color. Only four of the 47 pieces are in charcoal.
During the pandemic, Hartman opened an Instagram account and discovered “all these artists working in realism.” Because of the shutdown, they had turned to teaching on an online platform and she began watching their demonstrations and taking classes. “I struggled a lot with form and didn’t think I could pull off realism. Now I’m doing all these academic exercises and painting master copies – things I either didn’t learn before or didn’t allow myself to learn.”
Since then, she has taken very rigorous classes, including a week last summer at the esteemed Grand Central Atelier (GCA) in Queens, New York where she studied figure drawing, structure, and expression. “That was intense!” Students worked on portraying only one pose for the entire week (!) “I find pencil to be very tough,” she says, as charcoal feels more friendly and familiar to her, and she finds tone easier to come by. “While I really admire the instructors and their work, I don’t think I aspire to truly academic drawing and painting. But I definitely “see” better now.”
As far as learning oil painting and mixing color, she started with an introductory online class from GCA, and then took a science-of-still-life course. “Oil was something I was just always afraid of.” She has also studied online with Tel Aviv-based figurative artist Yuval Yosifov. Now, Hartman says she is working in an “additive rather than a subtractive way.” Her medium is linseed oil, but she confides that she tends to use turpentine a lot to thin out the paint. We discuss how that is probably because it feels “safer” and less intimidating to have a thin wash, rather than to “reckon with a big blob of paint.”
Hartman continues, “I’ve avoided this discipline for a while, but it’s nice to be reinvigorated: my sister calls it your ‘second mountain’ when you find something within your field that you get excited about mid-career.”
Color & Size is a show that Savannah art collectors will not want to miss. The work is simple, beautiful, and pure. As gallerist Peter Roberts explains so well, “Mary’s sensitive and empathetic personality translates through her artwork. Her discreet mark-making and lyrical use of negative space elevates whatever subject matter she depicts.” Her studied but seemingly effortless technique makes us see castoff work boots, a lone lemon, or a weighty anvil as if for the first time.
My hope is that she finally realizes just how unique and how truly talented she is.
Mary Hartman’s solo show, Color & Size, opens on Friday, March 8 at Location Gallery, 251 Bull Street. Follow Hartman on Instagram @maryhartmanstudio and visit her website at www.maryhartman.net Location Gallery can be followed @locationgallery or at www.locationgallery.net. Gallery profits from this show benefit nonprofit Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia.
Hartman regularly displays her work upstairs at P.W. Short Mercantile, 414 Whitaker Street, and is actively seeking gallery representation.
