His work also touches
upon vernacular forms such as the muralist tradition and the comic book, as seen in his comics - inspired Rythm Mastr drawings (2000 — present), in order to address and correct the «vacuum in the image bank» — in other words, to make the invisible visible.
The
vernacular wood frame of his Church at Head Tide (1938) exemplifies this concentration
upon local
forms: the black outlines surrounding the structure — increasingly prevalent in Hartley's work after the early 1930s — metaphorize this inward turning.