Hartwig was born and raised in Dallas, Texas.  His work as an artist was first inspired when doing graduate studies in Rome.  Each day walking to the university, he stopped in churches filled with masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raphael, Michelangelo, explored the great archaeological parks where soaring Roman monuments evoked the genius of unnamed architects, and wandered through the narrow streets and alleys where yellow ochre and sienna hued palaces created an ever surprising urban canvas.

After graduate school, he began bringing groups of people to Italy and subsequently launched a career with Illume, an organization specializing in group travel to places of great historical, artistic and spiritual heritage, where he helps clients design unique and inspiring journeys (www.travelillume.com).

Travel to places of great beauty and artistic heritage awakened a deep urge to find a way to capture the feeling and experience of those places in pigment and canvas.  In 2003, with a few brushes some acrylic paint and a fresh canvas, he spent the afternoons of his vacation in Provincetown attempting to capture the soaring majesty of the Palatine Hill overlooking the Circus Maximus from a photo taken in the late afternoon sun.  Over the next four years he experimented with different subjects - landscapes, cityscapes, architecture, and human form, and shifted exclusively to oils.

During the summer of 2008, while strolling through the galleries of Provincetown, he spotted an announcement for a painting workshop with Robert Cardinal, renowned for his dramatic use of late evening and early morning light to create rich contrasts and color.  The lessons were invaluable and foundational for bringing Hartwig's work to a new maturity.

Hartwig lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts dividing time between teaching religion and ethics at local universities, organizing customized group travel experiences for Illume, and painting.