When Corinne Hartley left the Chouinard Art Institute in 1944 after two years of intensive study she was confident about drawing the figure and had a portfolio to prove it. An opportunity soon opened for her to work in what she calls "the high powered field of commercial art – fashion illustration." She immediately took the job, and for the next thirty years continued to utilize her drawing skills as a fashion illustrator and, in off hours, as a painter.

Her main subjects were women and children. When photography began to inch its way into fashion advertising, she made the transition by exhibiting her work at local galleries gradually establishing a solid career as a fine artist. Immensely popular with the public, her life-like portraits were widely coveted, and she began to feel the pressures of keeping up with her growing number of portrait commissions where children and adults continued to be her subjects.

Over the years Hartley has felt equally at home working in several mediums – charcoal pencil, watercolor, and oil. In the 1990s she began exploring sculpture as well, energetically making it a capstone to a career that spans more than sixty years.