Paul Hartley

In his mixed media paintings, Paul Jerome Hartley usually indulged in a bit of fancy; he borrowed segments from well-known paintings like Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding and used the likenesses of such famous individuals as Fred Astaire and Albert Einstein. Represented with crisp detail, these elements tend to float against mottled backgrounds. 

Hartley was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and spent his childhood in Atlanta. He enrolled at the University of North Texas in Denton where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967. He proceeded to get his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1970 from East Carolina University School of Art and Design in Greenville, North Carolina. The program impacted him significantly. He remained in Greenville to join the faculty, and from 1975 to his retirement in 2009, he was the head of the painting program.

A popular instructor, he encouraged his students to become acquainted with various historical styles, as exemplified by his own work. He explained: “I try to make things with enough substance to be seen as something more than marks and pigment on paper or canvas, something with its own specialty. My own interest is not in representing nature or the real world, but in creating something with enough of nature’s attributes, its visual complexity, to engage the viewer in really looking. I hope the viewer will respond to the arrangement of what is seen and feel something, however small.”