When Christopher Hartshorne is done with something, he’s done. “It’s such a simple phrase, but it’s very powerful to be done with something, especially if it’s giving you anxiety,” says the Bellingham, Washington-based printmaker. He’s just wrapped up a two-week residency with In Cahoots, a pastoral hideaway in Petaluma, CA, designed for writers, bookmakers, and printmakers to collaborate and share ideas in small groups. It’s the perfect setting for an artist whose recent work has shifted from pure abstraction to representational world-building and surreal symbolism.
“I don't consider myself a writer,” Christopher says, “but maybe I can use the structure of a basic story: conflict, climax, resolution. Maybe I can interpret that on the walls somehow.”
His current body of work, a black and white block-printed series called Graphic Myths, revolves around his preoccupation with the moon and its mysterious sway over our short, anxiety-ridden lives. “It's almost like I'm thinking about escapism in our current times; I want to go to the moon, or can I get off Earth?” he says, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic reignited his interest in illustrative projects like Graphic Myths. “That's when I transitioned from this abstract work to more drawing-heavy, realistic, or recognizable things. I'm just obsessed with the theme of moons right now.”
Introverts and those with social anxiety may recognize themselves in Christopher’s Graphic Myths self-portrait, “Waiting Room,” where the naked artist's hands are oversized to the point of being useless. “It’s the anxiety of not knowing what to do with yourself,” Christopher says, characterizing these ambiguous scenes as “different” and “queer-coded.” While anxiety is the throughline that ties Christopher’s work together, his sense of humor still shines through, even in the most dreary moonscape or impossible portrait. It’s most obvious in his paint-by-number text pieces, where abrupt patterns, clashing colors, and phrases like “Brain Be Like” suggest a short-circuiting nervous system, stuttering and sputtering from overwhelm.
Christopher’s work appears in our July 2025 exhibition, Every Emotion All at Once. Visit the exhibition via the button below, then scroll through to read our interview with Christopher Hartshorne.
In Today’s Q+Art Interview…
Christopher Hartshorne discusses his current obsession with all things moon, describes printmaking as distinctive language, and explains why Barbarella is the ultimate camp influence on his work.
What influenced your decision to transition from illustration and painting to printmaking, particularly woodblock printing?
Christopher Hartshorne: With printmaking, it was so final and certain; you knew what you were getting. Everything you carved and printed was so bold and crisp. There was something that appealed to me. A painting was so mysterious to me, or how to make a painting, or when a painting was finished. But printing, I knew when it was done, it was very strong, bold. It was almost like a self-help thing. I need this in my life, this certainty or structure, the process.
Can you share more about your latest body of work centered around moons and the concept of graphic myths? What inspired this shift in your artistic focus?
CH: Ever since the pandemic, I've gone back to illustration. I just find pleasure in drawing more. So that's when I transitioned from this abstract work to more drawing-heavy, realistic, or recognizable things. I'm interested in making the moons really dramatic or sci-fi, like some that have explosions or some are cut up with weird things happening inside. There's a hand emerging from one of the moons. I'm also interested in the drama of what these could mean and the ambiguity of it all.
What are your plans for ‘Graphic Myths’?
CH: I'm planning a giant installation with many different moons in a giant grid. I don't have enough time to create that installation while I’m at In Cahoots, but I can make some moves on it. It’s so funny; I was doing the complete opposite last year, all these abstract color fields.
I have a lot of work to do with Graphic Myths, but installation is exciting to me. I'm still transitioning from that abstract work, which was about having to grow on a wall. How am I going to grow? Because I feel that it needs to happen. How am I going to do that with what I’m doing now? It's almost like world-building. Come into my world, my installation narrative, and read or walk through it.
I've tried to talk about it as my own language. These blocks are like words you might rearrange in some type of poetry. I'm rearranging my blocks to describe the process. I've also described it as drawing. I'm drawing on the blocks before I carve them, but I'm also using them to draw with. Instead of taking a pencil, I'm just printing and extending a drawing. Even though it's woodblock, it sometimes feels like other mediums. When I'm making the colorful ones, it feels like they're paintings, even though I'm printing and not using a brush at all.
Can you describe your artistic process and how you create your paintings, which look like prints?
CH: For “Brain Be Like,” I created a collage and took a photo of it. In the painting, I wrote the words and figured out how to paint them. I was very graphic about it. There's not a lot of blending. Each shape is its own color, almost like a paint-by-number.
What are your thoughts on ‘Sci-Fi Still Life’ and ‘Asteroid Autopsy’? How do you interpret their imagery and the emotions they evoke?
CH: I was afraid “Sci-Fi Still Life” would be too gross, but I see this as kind of funny. I was thinking about cheese, just pouring cheese over everything. But the title suggests these could be real objects in a science fiction world. Or even useful objects. Like the cheese block is part of their lives or something. In “Asteroid Autopsy,” it’s just like a moon, but it's also fleshy and organic, kind of combining the two.
What artists, artworks, or pieces of media most influence your work?
CH: Black Hole by Charles Burns. That one just resonates with me, even though it’s older. There’s a sci-fi element there.
Barbarella, just because of the campiness of that movie. The sets are just amazing and sometimes cheesy. You could probably also say this is a terrible movie, misogynistic and exploitive, but I also think Jane Fonda is very hilarious, and I recently just saw it, so it's been on my mind.
