Press Release
Bowery Gallery October 6-31, 2009
Mapping the Ordinary
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How does the painter reinvent the presence we all experience in the world around us? Christine Hartman’s seemingly ordinary subjects, still life and figures, are not copied representations but reconstructions of a complex visual world.  The underlying geometry in the paintings, seen in the drawings, exposes the scaffolding and careful planning by the artist, building the tension in these remarkable paintings.  Hartman's works create an interplay of space and form that push and pull you to arrive at her chosen destination—a sense of presence in an extraordinary world.

Originally from the Midwest Christine Hartman studied with Stanley Lewis at the Kansas City Art Institute where she received her BFA with honors. She moved to New York in the 70’s to study at the Parsons MFA program and later completed her MFA at Brooklyn College. She has shown regularly at galleries in New York and Connecticut and has been represented by the Piermont Flywheel Gallery and Sound Shore Gallery; she joined the Bowery Gallery in 2002. This is her second show at Bowery. Her work is held in public and private collections in the Northeast and Midwest. She has also received fellowships and awards, including The Shaw award for Painters and a Helena Rubinstein Foundation grant.

An Imaginary Interview
Based on questions people typically ask me.

Interviewer:  I would like to know about your drawings. They look like plans for the paintings and why all of the diagonal lines?
Chris:  The drawings are made when I work on the paintings. They don’t come first but are part of the process. The drawing informs the painting as the painting generates the drawing. So when I draw I am looking for connections that I can then transfer to the painting. I don’t think of realism as the usual modern idea of addition, which is adding of details, but rather the building of relationships. My paintings don’t get more complex looking as I work. They look simpler because the pieces become more unified as I work. The diagonal lines are a search for connections.

Interviewer:  Why do some paintings still have some visible lines and others do not?
Chris:  I do work the diagonals back into the painting; they tell me how I need to move the objects to complete a rhythm or form. While the lines are often painted over your brain still reads them in the imaginary world of paint much as it constructs space in the physical world. So it doesn’t matter so much if you see each complete line – you feel it anyway.

Interviewer:  Is your drawing mathematical in some way? Why do the lines in the drawing go outside of the rectangle of the painting?
Chris:  I do visualize my work in a very geometric way. One of the very basic principles of painting for me is ambiguity. The geometry is the scaffolding that holds opposing readings of space and form, light/dark, figure/ground, and textural and light contrasts. I draw outside of the rectangle that equals the edges of the painting so that I can see how things hook up in the viewer’s space. I think of the construction of space in painting as not just behind the picture plane but in front of it as well.

Interviewer:  Then would you say you paint what you see?
Chris: I would say I reconstruct what I see. Nature has order and our minds and emotions have order. Painting is the bringing together of the two – they are in harmony anyway.