My Journey ( So Far )

  My name is Gary Hartenhoff. I was born in Sioux Falls, S.D. in 1935. Surrounded by horizon-touching fields and endless blue sky, I developed the desire to re-create what I saw around me. In high school, I took every art class offered and started painting designs on cars and store windows, which lead to sign painting at a very early age.
    In 1962, while in my 20’s, tamed by marriage and a young family, I settled into a successful career as founder of Hart Signs and Graphics. But my passion for fine art never dimmed. In 1976, with my business well under way, I started three years of intensive work in stained glass.
   By 1981 I was, once again enrolling in painting and drawing workshops offered by Augustana College in Sioux Falls, the University of Minnesota and, most recently, the Scottsdale School of Art in Arizona.
   In 1989, with my children grown and my marriage in the past, I closed Hart Signs and headed west to pursue my dream. My travels took me to the Pacific Coast, and southern California where I studied fine art oil painting for the next 18 years.
   In the spring of 2007 I returned to my home land of South Dakota to paint the prairie land of the Midwest I so much enjoyed as a young man. I now plein air paint and work in my studio at 420 East 8th Street in Sioux Falls producing wonderful professional oil canvas landscapes.