A unique book bringing together thirty-two of Canada's top authors and one great painter for a series of moving portraits in paint and prose Many Lives Mark this Place is a unique and brilliant project: portraits of 32 of Canada's finest authors, painted into their "home landscape," each accompanied by a short-but-powerful essay about how that place influences their life and work. Hartman travelled from Newfoundland to Tofino and visited tiny hamlets, our densest metropolises, remote beaches, Rocky Mountain peaks, and even a shopping mall, often using camera-equipped drones or chartered planes to gain the vantage necessary for arresting, information-dense compositions.

While the authors and places vary greatly in style and geography - from Johanna Skibsrud to Thomas King; the glaciers of the Rockies to downtown Montreal - each entry is united by John Hartman's rich and vivid painting style, which offers a novel perspective on the writers we love and the places that formed them.

Featuring portraits of and essays by Carleigh Baker, David Bergen, Neil Bissoondath , George Bowering, George Elliott Clarke, Megan Coles, Douglas Coupland, Esi Edugyan, Marina Endicott, Will Ferguson, Camilla Gibb, Katherine Govier, Thomas King, Mary Lynk, David Macfarlane, Linden MacIntyre , Kevin Major, Heather O'Neill, David Adams Richards, Noah Richler, Chic Scott, Johanna Skibsrud, Sara Tilley, Guy Vanderhaeghe, M.G. Vassanji, Thomas Wharton, and Kathleen Winter.

John Hartman was born in 1950 in Midland, Ontario, and studied Fine Art at McMaster University. In the 1980s with the emergence of Neo-Expressionism, Hartman began to experiment with works that combined figurative, narrative and landscape traditions that would later evolve into the uniquely painterly expression for which he is acclaimed today. He received national exposure with the exhibit and catalogue Big North which toured the country between 1999 and 2002. Hartman works between his studio and home near Lafontaine and his island on Georgian Bay in Ontario, and frequently travels across North America and Europe sketching, photographing, and documenting landscapes, cities and their stories and histories for his paintings.

John Hartman's profile page

Ian M. Thom is a Senior Curator-Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Involved in Canadian art museums for more than thirty years, he has also held senior curatorial positions at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. He has organized more than one hundred exhibitions and written numerous articles and authored or co-authored many books, including Robert Davidson: Eagle of the Dawn, Andy Warhol: Images, Art BC, E.J. Hughes, Takao Tanabe, B.C. Binning, Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon and Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

Ian M. Thom's profile page