The MORRISON GALLERY | Dennis Hartley Bio

Biography

Dennis Hartley was born and raised in Southern California, eventually moving to the Northwest in 1977. Over the last thirty years, he has worn the hats of architect, designer, and builder. He received his degree in architecture from Arizona State University in 1972, and has been a registered Architect since 1976.

Early in his architectural career, he lived and worked in Paris and Lausanne, Switzerland. His work as a furniture designer has been represented by major galleries and showrooms from coast to coast, as well as exhibited at the International Furniture Fair in New York City. In 1998 he put aside other professional pursuits in order to paint full time.

"My many years of design-related activity have had a strong impact on my work as a painter. Accordingly, I’m always looking for ways to distill the compositional elements necessary to express a central idea. Up to this point, I’ve avoided any didactic approach, or overtly cultural points of view, in favor of pursuing elemental concerns with space, composition, color, and form. My goal has been to create a body of work that communicates on deep emotional and spiritual levels, and that achieves a degree of universality.

I find myself returning to the same neutral subject matter, which I express in new ways as I evolve as a painter. The coast motif of rock, water, and sky, is my most direct reference to Chinese painting. The barn and open road motifs, in contrast, allow me (born and raised in the West) to express the fundamental American aspect of my sensibility. Lastly, with the urban motif of cars and buildings, I explore how my medium, oil, can express movement and activity. Images of contemporary life become abstracted fragments that form a representational whole."