TED HARTLEY
TED HARTLEY R E C E N T PA I N T I N G S SEPTEMBER 2019
K E Y E S A RT 5 3 Ma i n St re e t Sa g H a r b o r, N Y
HEART LEAP:
RECENT PAINTINGS BY TED HARTLEY Ted Hartley has that uncanny ability to make art that is drenched in living atmosphere, color, and light; his images palpitate like whipped up airborne particles of energy that create an infinite and indeterminate mist. These are magical invocations about that endless pursuit of representations that might finally nail down a tiny piece of the world. Hartley believes the sea and the sky can be captured in a bottle; his arsenal of marks of the last couple of years is unleashed in a series of refined abstract paintings that evoke the omnipotent. Unsurprisingly, the Atlantic Ocean off East Hampton provides Hartley with a majestic backdrop as he respectfully acknowledges a lineage of American artists dedicated to the romantic and transcendental pursuit of the sublime. For these artists the land and sea provides a source of inspiration that stretches from the heavenly to the hellish extremes of nature. While Hartley is making art in the shades of the masters in reality those bohemian days of the East End happened long ago. The recent deaths of Mary Lee Abbott, Kynaston McShine, and Jane Freilicher most likely closed that chapter for good. But nearly the same sea and sky remain and that celebrated pronouncement by Willem de Kooning from 1960 is remarkably valid: “Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter, like a flash.”
Ted Hartley knows how this all works because he’s traveled some distance and while he’s not old-fashioned he is saturated with history. All of his stories are not necessarily spelled out in his paintings but look more closely: no guilt, no shame, no boredom, no fatigue and no fear. Hartley is preserving his joy. His patrician stance belies the fact that moving paint around on a canvas is messy and soils the hands. For Hartley making art is a call to action regardless the predicament of any given day: necessity pokes hard. He’s always applying steady pressure and making heat by building bundles of marks and striations into advancing forms of light and energy; blunt strokes organized and bound together by a private force. Let’s be real, mysteries don’t flourish like flies but it’s not foolishness to believe or to have faith: artists keep their eye on the road because the bridge beyond could be at the next turn. Hartley forges ahead with enduring concentration, chasing a flawless conclusion. Imagine him rejoicing like a child: in a flash and out of the blue he finishes a painting. It lands squarely on his lap, complete and intact, when just a few moments earlier it seemed totally out of reach! It’s a grand slam home run, a hole-in-one, and a hat trick all at once. Divine intervention. Applying color such as conch-shell pink, deep yellow, cerulean, and earth green, Hartley evokes the skies of a
Tiepolo painting as much as the dunes of East Hampton. Like de Kooning, he grounds his abstractions in the real by identifying his images with lived experiences. Hartley and de Kooning insist that the final image reveal detectable signs of nature. De Kooning wrote: “If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most of art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble. The Egyptians are trembling invisibly and so do Vermeer and Giacometti and all of a sudden, for the time being, Raphael is languid and nasty; Cézanne was always trembling but very precisely.” Early on psychoanalysts struggled to give “regression” a meaningful place in psychic (and artistic) development; Freud wrote it off as a defense mechanism but Carl Jung argued otherwise and gave “regression” a bigger meaning by linking the tendency to a primary need to retrieve something essential from childhood: “regression in the service of the ego”. Artists rely on joy and delight otherwise they would pile up in mounds of gloom. The inflated claims of Post-War American art both helped and hurt because the 1940s and 50s squarely established a canon of intensity and dominance for American modernism: visceral marks forged by conviction and gut. It was an era marked by the swelling pride of victory and success. The image
of the American artist was born. Years have passed and the imperial discourse of those years has faded and been replaced by a more nuanced awareness of everything pictorial. Each and every generation of artists writes their own rulebook. A few years later, and with the guidance of Ad Reinhardt, it was Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin who safely landed American abstraction in the early 60s. The mark and the grand gesture completely lost ground with younger artists and their new ways of making art. Today is very different and the world of culture is so vast and fragmented that each and every artist is required to become a center: only the most genuine aspirations break out and take hold. Movements with designations such as “action painters” have receded into the long ago but Ted Hartley remains clued in. It’s more than likely that he has no need for a rear view mirror because absolutely no one else is driving in his lane. Hartley is guided by the simplest movements like his hand making contact with a piece of paper. Nothing stands in his way; he knows that truth is a fragile thing. Making art is his testament to this. Finally. When your calling in life is to monitor the universe, gentleness and graciousness do count for a lot.
George Negroponte September 2019
Untitled August 2018 Ink, watercolor, and acrylic on paper 22.75 x 30 in.
Untitled August 2019 Watercolor and acrylic on paper 22.25 x 30 in.
Untitled December 2018 Ink and pastel on paper 30.75 x 20.5 in.
Untitled December 2018 Ink and pastel on paper 20.5 x 30.75 in.
Come Clean July 2019 Ink, charcoal, watercolor and wash on paper 24 x 18 in.
Untitled August 2019 Watercolor on paper 22.25 x 30 in.
Untitled August 2019 Ink and watercolor on paper 24 x 18 in.
Untitled August 2018 Ink and charcoal on paper 14 x 17.5 in.
Untitled January 2019 Ink and pastel on paper 24 x 19 in.
Untitled February 2019 Oil pastel on paper 20.5 x 30.75 in.
Joy, Despair, Hope, Pride February 2012 Ink and charcoal on paper 13 x 17 in.
Untitled August 2018 Ink and charcoal on paper 14 x 17.5 in.
Emotional Self Portrait September 2018 Ink and charcoal on paper 14 x 17 in.
Untitled January 2019 Ink and pastel on paper 19 x 24 in.
Untitled January 2019 Ink and pastel on paper 18 x 24 in.
Untitled October 2018 Ink and pastel on paper 20.5 x 30.75 in.
Untitled February 2019 Ink, charcoal, and colored pencil on paper 19 x 24 in.
Purpose October 2018 Ink and pastel on paper 18.5 x 24 in.
Untitled Ink and pastel on paper 19 x 24 in.
Untitled January 2019 Ink and charcoal on paper 14.75 x 21.75 in.
Untitled April 2019 Ink and charcoal on paper 18 x 24 in.
Untitled October 2018 Ink and pastel on paper 18 x 24 in.
Untitled September 2019 Ink and watercolor on paper 24 x 18 inches
Ted Hartley spent his childhood dreaming. He dreamt about flying; He flew. He dreamt about acting; He acted. He dreamt about true love; He married her. Then he dreamt about being an artist, and with the same joie de vivre, he painted. Unlike the rest of the world, who may have checked only one of those boxes, he checks them all. In spades. No one does painting, does life, like Ted Hartley. – Julie Keyes
These paintings come with the excitement of discovery. Fortunate accidents that welcome the unexpected. The pleasure-freedom of letting curiosity off the leash. The burble of inner-delight at something created that you know is true and good. The power-lift when desire to see what can happen overcomes fear of foolish and becomes something new that is yours and you can try again in a different way. The occasional heart-leap when a line defines perfectly, when the color you mixed captures the feeling you longed for. Letting yourself go, knowing it may be awful and that would be just fine. The sudden flicker of joy when it is just right and you feel it. Painting. – Ted Hartley
Credit Julie Keyes, Curator Gary Mamay, Photography George Negroponte, Foreword Madison Kelly, Design Rob Wilner Cover Art Untitled September 2019 Ink and watercolor on paper 24 x 18 inches
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