“‘Little Hero’ is a metaphor for the human experience—it represents the tension between the roles we play and our vulnerability.”
An Artist Rooted in Place, Reaching Beyond
The visual language of Hanna Hartig is shaped by the city of Cottbus, Germany, where she was born in 1984 and continues to live and work. Her art exists in a tension between grounded familiarity and bold experimentation. This balance becomes immediately apparent in her paintings, which alternate between recognizable realism and layered abstraction. Hartig’s work resists categorization; she embraces vivid gradients, complex textures, and gestural forms to explore intangible concepts such as emotion, identity, and authenticity. The interplay between reality and illusion, inspired in part by the philosophical approach of Gerhard Richter, is a recurring thread in her artistic inquiry.
From an early age, Hartig was drawn to the act of painting, and over time, her creative process evolved into a career marked by constant transformation. Her journey took shape through open studio events and solo exhibitions, including shows at Kunsthalle Lausitz in her hometown and at NeonBazaar art gallery in Stuttgart. Today, she continues her development as a Resident Artist at lDXArt Galerie in Bad Mergentheim, where the environment offers her the space and resources to push her creative boundaries. Each chapter of her journey is marked by a deepening of her visual language, yet always centered around the desire to express what lies beneath the surface of everyday life.
Hartig’s canvases offer more than just visuals—they invite emotional recognition. Her chosen mediums, acrylic and oil paint, help her bridge the gap between immediate, intuitive gesture and thoughtful refinement. The contrast between fast movement and deliberate detail allows her to capture moments that feel simultaneously spontaneous and intentional. Through this method, she brings into focus themes of vulnerability, introspection, and the often-fragile architecture of identity. In works like People Pleaser and The Curiosity of the Moment, viewers encounter these internal tensions through color, posture, and texture—each painting a quiet provocation to reconsider the masks we wear.
Hanna Hartig: The Strength Behind Stillness
Few artworks embody Hartig’s vision as poignantly as Little Hero, a painting that carries both visual charm and emotional gravity. At its center is a child dressed in a Batman costume, set against a vibrant green backdrop. The figure’s posture—head bowed, shoulders slightly hunched—introduces a complex emotional subtext. While the costume might suggest playfulness or empowerment, the body language reveals something more solemn: the weight of expectations, perhaps, or the quiet fatigue that can accompany even our most heroic roles. Through this work, Hartig captures the nuanced dissonance between appearance and inner reality.
For Hartig, Little Hero stands as a metaphor for the contradiction embedded in human experience—the drive to appear strong versus the inevitability of vulnerability. The painting resonates on a deeply personal level, expressing a truth that many can relate to: the societal demand to maintain composure even when we feel overwhelmed. This thematic focus is at the core of her practice, influencing not only the content of her pieces but also the textures, contrasts, and forms she chooses to employ. In Little Hero, softness and saturation converge, emphasizing both the fragility and courage it takes to simply be.
Her broader body of work mirrors this exploration of dualities. While emotional resonance is central to her compositions, Hartig resists sentimentality. Instead, she positions her figures and forms in states of unresolved tension. The tension is rarely narrative; it’s visual and emotional. By doing so, she opens space for viewers to reflect, to project their own interpretations, and to confront their own complexities. Whether abstract or figurative, her paintings avoid didacticism, opting instead for emotional clarity and perceptual ambiguity. The result is a body of work that doesn’t instruct—it invites.
Textures of Identity and the Urge to Expand
In Hartig’s studio, freedom is not just a conceptual ideal but a physical necessity. The artist surrounds herself with tools and materials that allow for intuitive shifts in approach. Her process oscillates between planning and spontaneity, silence and sound, control and improvisation. Whether she is applying a translucent glaze of oil or layering thick acrylic with bold strokes, the choices she makes stem from instinct as much as from intention. This openness to chance is not a hindrance; rather, it is a catalyst for invention. Distractions are not avoided—they’re embraced, often leading to unexpected breakthroughs.
Her preference for acrylic and oil paints is both practical and expressive. Acrylic’s quick-drying nature accommodates immediate experimentation, allowing for rapid layering and gestural expression. In contrast, oil paint provides the depth and time required for complex blending and tonal shifts. Together, these mediums allow Hartig to create the distinctive gradients and textures that define her visual identity. Although she has explored other techniques, these two forms remain her primary tools—chosen not just for their versatility, but for the emotional range they enable.
Hartig’s future aspirations reflect her desire to expand the sensory impact of her work. She envisions a large-scale installation that moves beyond the frame—an immersive space where painting, light, and spatial design converge to form an emotional environment. In this envisioned project, the boundaries between artwork and viewer dissolve, inviting participants into a world that can be seen, moved through, and felt. This ambition to push painting into a more experiential dimension speaks to her ongoing commitment to evolution. She seeks not only to express emotion on canvas but to construct entire atmospheres around it.
Hanna Hartig: The Artists Who Shape Her Vision
The evolution of Hartig’s practice has been guided by a diverse set of influences, both historical and contemporary. Gerhard Richter’s philosophical interrogation of truth in visual art has left a significant imprint on her, particularly his ability to navigate between figuration and abstraction without allegiance to one over the other. Richter’s exploration of perception and ambiguity mirrors Hartig’s own inquiry into emotional and psychological complexity. She connects with his way of constantly questioning not only what we see, but how we come to see it, and what lies beyond the visible.
Beyond Richter, Hartig also finds deep resonance in the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Frida Kahlo—two artists known for their raw, intensely personal expressions. From Basquiat, she draws inspiration from his energetic, sometimes chaotic compositions, which carry an emotional immediacy that Hartig admires. His layering of symbols and language speaks to her own interest in the interplay between form and feeling. Kahlo’s influence, on the other hand, is felt in Hartig’s emotional candor and her willingness to explore themes of pain, identity, and resilience. The personal becomes universal in Kahlo’s portraits, and Hartig strives for a similar effect in her own practice.
Importantly, Hartig does not confine her sources of inspiration to art history or galleries. Everyday encounters, fleeting expressions, and subtle gestures of those around her frequently inform her paintings. People, their stories, their struggles, and moments of unspoken emotion all become visual cues in her creative process. These observations translate into work that feels intimate yet expansive, rooted in the specificity of individual experience while speaking to a broader human condition. Her art emerges not from detachment, but from deep attentiveness—an ongoing act of seeing, feeling, and translating life into color and form.
