Toni Hartley is an artist based in Carrboro, North Carolina, whose paintings give primacy to our most fantastic tool - the hand. 

For most of us, our hands are our first tools. For nourishing ourselves, fending for ourselves, strengthening ourselves, providing for ourselves, and for communicating our needs and wants. Hands summon intense pleasure and extraordinary pain.

Through an intuitive process of play and imagination, Toni’s art captures moments of decisiveness and discernment, as well as magic and intuition. Her paintings celebrate and transcend everyday actions of wielding, gesturing, penetrating, creating, and manifesting and explore ephemeral power made permanent.

Hartley’s art is often an investigative journey into healing oneself and utilizing creativity as a spiritual practice. Themes of queer identity, sacred ceremony, feminism, environmentalism, and anti-racism can be spotted throughout her expressive and playful work.

Defying gender, these hands contemplate our most primal facilities and imagine potential futures in which all bodies have access to the tools necessary for healing, empowerment, inspiration, and protection.

Hartley has studied various visual and musical arts and earned a BA in American Studies with a concentration in Arts in America and a minor in Film Studies from Smith College. She also earned an MPH from UNC-Chapel Hill. Hartley has shown her work in Carrboro, NC, Raleigh, NC, and Chapel Hill, NC.

Solo Exhibitions:

TOOLS, Ceremony Salon, Carrboro, NC, July 2022

Group Exhibitions:

ICYMI!, The Northside District, Chapel Hill, May 2025

PEEL @ REBUS, Rebus Works Gallery, Raleigh, NC, June 2024

Full Spectrum, 311 Gallery, Raleigh, NC, June 2024

BASEMENT X PEEL fundraiser exhibition, Peel Gallery, Carrboro, NC September 2022

Email tonihartley@gmail.com with inquiries.