JOHN HARTMAN GEORGIAN BAY: PORTRAITS FROM THE SHORELINE

JOHN HARTMAN GEORGIAN BAY: PORTRAITS FROM THE SHORELINE

Cognashene and Go Home Bay - The Group of Seven, 2014, oil on linen, 60 x 66 inches Twelve Mile Bay - Andy Trudeau, 2014, oil on linen, 60 x 66 inches

Port Severn to Beausoleil, 2014, oil on linen, 60 x 66 inches Wawataysee, 2014, oil on linen, 60 x 66 inches

Ann MacIntosh Duff at Scotch Pine Island, 2014, oil on linen, 34 x 36 inches THE SKETCHBOOK I wanted to paint my home landscape, which is the entire eastern shoreline of Georgian Bay, in one continuous painting. I had a sketchbook made that opened like an accordion. I started the watercolour sketch at the south end of the Bay, with a view above Camp Shawanaga where I grew up, and then painted the view westward over Port Severn and then on to Midland. Working both from memory and from maps, I continued the sketch north over Cognashene, Go Home Bay, Wawataysee and O Donnell Point. This landscape is full of history and a lifetime of personal memories. It is a landscape painted by Canada s most well known painters, the Group of Seven. It is also a place with a distinctive culture. I painted references to all these things into the landscape in my sketchbook. Just north of O Donnell Point, I sketched a large portrait of Andy Trudeau. Andy grew up in Spider Bay but lived his adult life on an outer island on the north shore of Twelve Mile Bay, hunting, trapping, building boats, operating Manitou Marina and working as a general handyman for cottagers in the immediate area. The portrait itself is based on a pencil drawing I made of Andy in 1974, when I lived with him and his wife Pat for the winter months. On the horizon, the passenger ship Waubuno is wrecked on the Haystack Reefs. Andy drives his airplane-engine-powered scoot. A red fox hangs by its feet from a clothesline. These events, separated by over a hundred years, are united by the landscape they share.

Looking North from Above The Head Island Shoals, 2014, oil on linen, 48 x 68 inches As the sketchbook continues north, writers, artists, friends, present day residents and events from history all populate the land. The sketchbook stops at the French River and the last image is a self-portrait. I believe that people and place create each other. It seemed natural for me to combine portraits with the landscape and to allow each element to integrate into the other. PORT SEVERN TO BEAUSOLEIL This is the first oil painting in the series. I grew up moving between Midland, where my family spent the winter, and Port Severn where we lived in June, July and August each year while my parents operated Camp Shawanaga. This view starts above Port Severn and continues west across Severn Sound to Midland and Penetanguishene, then ends at the western shoreline of Nottawasaga Bay. My mother and father are painted as twenty year olds in the lower right and left corners. Between them I am starting out in a canoe in early spring on my first sketching trip after finishing art school. Above me, oriented sideways, are images of my grandmother and grandfather Haig on the day they picked me up in Port Severn to take me to Camp Hurontario. I was eight years old. Floating above the horizon is WJ Wood, a Midland artist whose paintings I grew up with. He painted Georgian Bay as a place full of people, not as a northern wilderness, and this has influenced my work.

Ed Tonello s Fish Camp, 2014, oil on linen, 66 x 93 inches LOOKING NORTH FROM ABOVE THE HEAD ISLAND SHOALS When I was young I dreamt of flying over the landscape near Port Severn. In the dream I would simply put my arms by my side and I would be airborne. I sketch and paint from an elevated viewpoint as a kind of homage to these dreams. Sometimes I use airplanes and helicopters to help me visualize these views. This summer I bought a small drone, which allowed me to see the landscape from above in a way that was remarkably similar to the way I had painted it for years, and the way I dreamt it as a child. This painting is a view from above the shoals between Head Island and the mainland, looking north across the open water, past the entrance to Norgate Inlet and on to the Magnetawan Ledges. I had painted from these shoals for many years, but now I could see much more clearly how the black rock intrusion that always caught my attention, spread out over a distance and interlocked with the pink granite. I could see the pattern that the waterlilies formed in the dark water of the rock pools. This new information brought more intimacy to this landscape, even with the elevated view. It was a place I already knew but I could see it in a new way. ED TONELLO S FISH CAMP Ed Tonello and his family are commercial fishermen operating out of Britt, Ontario. They also have a base of operations on an outer island, much closer to their fishing grounds. I first visited this island in the late sixties on a canoe trip down the bay with my friend,

Top: The Denton Shoals and The Inside Channel, 2014, oil on linen, 22 x 48 inches Above: The Basshole Rocks from Above, 2014, oil on linen, 22 x 48 inches Gard Shelley. There was an accumulation of machinery and boats amassed over years along the shoreline. Ed has removed much of the detritus of former fishermen, but the camp still has the look and feel of a workplace. In the painting, Ed s fishing tug, the Barbara B, is approaching the island from the southwest. Ed s sons, Dennis and Barry, stand on either side of him amid fish cleaning tables, lengths of fire hose, and a cement mixer. The Tonellos generator shed/sauna and their cottage are behind this, and Champlain Island sits in the distance. I am an avid collector of books, stories and historic photographs about the landscapes that interest me. I have sketched the people who live on Georgian Bay and listened to their stories since 1974. Every summer since 1985, I have returned to the same landscape south of Britt to paint. My formative years at Camp Shawanaga have been a continuing source of ideas for my paintings. These are the constituent parts of my new paintings. I now realize that I have been gathering them together throughout my entire career. JOHN HARTMAN, 2014 A Continuous Landscape of Georgian Bay from Port Severn to the French River, 2013-2014, watercolour on paper, 8 x 112 inches

45 1 ki ng stree t w e s t t or on t o m 5v 1k4 can ad a t. 41 6 2 05 9000 www. met iviergal l ery.co m Above: John Hartman, 2014, photo courtesy of David Hartman Cover: The French River Delta - Self Portrait, 2014 (detail), oil on linen, 60 x 66 inches