Marcus R. Hartse

Marcus R. Hartse is an award winning watercolorist who has been painting in Montana and the northwest for many years.  After a rather lengthy hiatus his interest in painting has rekindled and he has begun preparations to reenter the art world in a more active role.  His subject matter and painting and drawing styles are rather eclectic as he finds interest in alternative ways of expressing subject matter.  He is primarily a "hard edge" painter with elements of wet technique thrown in for accentuation of certain things but is not a "wet in wet" technique painter at all.  In reality his stylistic preferences are two; one being, of course, realistic presentation of the day to day.  The other preference is a more thought provoking symbolist sort of painting using almost a color field approach to enhance presentation.  Ideas are expressed in a kind of private language with associative color schemes to elicit viewer involvement.  Hartse also works in other mediums to some degree but prefers the freedom of watercolor and the effects that can be attained to oils, pastels, acrylics and the like.

Marcus Hartse would like to encourage all who visit this site to take time appreciate any sort of art either visual or musical and use it as a point of reflection.  This applies to not only his work but also other artists who elicit some sort of response in the viewer or listener.

Reflections was painted in about 1983 or so and that's my wife (and still is) sitting on the front steps of the old building we lived in at the time.