Christine Hartman

The Westfield Athenaeum is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibit of the art of Christine Hartman on February 1, 2023. The exhibit will remain on view until March 25^th. A reception on February 2^nd from 6 to 8 pm will give the public a chance to view the exhibit and meet the artist. The event is free and open to the public. 

Christine Hartman is one of the most exciting artists currently working in Western Massachusetts. Originally from the Midwest, she studied art in Paris in 1975, and then moved to New York, studying first at the Parsons School of Design, and eventually obtaining a Masters of Fine Art in Painting from Brooklyn College in 1982. Since then she has been active as a teacher in both New York and Connecticut, and has exhibited widely. Through the course of her career she has been represented by the Ann Leonard Gallery, the Piermont Flywheel Gallery, the Sound Shore Gallery, the Bowery Gallery, and the Oxbow Gallery in Easthampton.

Christine Hartman’s paintings are, on first glance, depictions of ordinary subjects, still life arrangements and figures in interior scenes. Yet they are not simple recreations of the objects she chooses to depict, but are reconstructions of a complex visual world. She maps the underlying geometry of the world around us, something most of us are only vaguely aware of, and through this process constructs an interplay of space and form that makes the viewer acutely aware of the peculiar characteristics of the objects that surround us. Her paintings are animated by a penetrating appraisal of the environment we inhabit. She scrutinizes the volume, the surface qualities, and the space occupied by objects all around us and helps us see them in ways we haven’t formally imagined. Guy McLain, Director of the Athenaeum, points out that, “The world created in Hartman’s paintings seems both familiar and mystifying at the same time.”

Hartman’s work also presents an interesting interplay with other artists. She has acutely analyzed and incorporated the vision of a number of diverse artists including: the Cubists, Jean Simeon Chardin, Giorgio Morandi, and especially the Swiss artist Balthus. But in each case, she has used the vocabulary of these artists to enhance and stimulate her own unique vision.