In my latest Interspace series studies, I’m enjoying the play between graphite drawing and color transparency. These studies interweave several elements that share contours and create depth. The Interspace studies explore spatial ambiguity.
My paintings combine the modulation of light with a sculptural illusionism. After many years of creating collages as studies for my paintings, now in my Interspace series of paintings and digital studies I am also working with low-relief setups created with cut and folded papers. These are color studies about light and shadow, ephemeral studies of the shapes of shadows and the negative spaces between cut-out shapes and the background. They are ideas for paintings; I have an idea of what I want to see and work toward it. Gradients from the internal shading of objects, or the shadows cast by objects, are cut up and employed in building abstract compositions. These are photo montages that are focused on the compression of space and light. My use of gradients and my drawing cutout shapes with scissors are the main components of this exploration.
The central focus in my Artifact Color Collages, begun in 2018, was the concept of phenomenal transparency; I employed opaque mixtures to achieve the illusion of transparency in the medium of oil paint. These were inspired by Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series and are collages created with painted woodblock papers. They were the oil paint mixtures from current paintings, influenced by the seasons and local weather.
Interlusion, begun in 2019, combined the Artifact Color Collages with a return to trompe l’oeil paint handling in the interest of capturing subtle gradations of veils of color as they arc and flow over the compositions of the Artifact Color Collages with some transparency. Interlusion blended two or more sensibilities of spatial and atmospheric relationships in two dimensions to capture the transparency effects and the multiple layers of colors and their interactions. The sense of atmosphere between the layers imparts a feeling of landscape to these paintings.
Reviews
‘Where reductive formalism (“Greenberg”) would see an unresolved contradiction I see a synergistic interplay that gives both kinds of transparency more meaning and value than either would have in isolation. It’s an expansive interplay, which gives these works a large scale and landscape atmosphere.’
-Carter Ratcliff
‘Gardiner’s earliest uncollages fuse conceptually complex topics, but visually champion minimalist aesthetic, despite the amalgam of genera present in single work – abstraction, surrealism, pop art, photomontage, dechirage, trompe l’oiel. What holds together her elegant partnerships between form and content is an exquisite sense of light and color.’
-Todd Bartel – excerpt from ‘Before It’s an Uncollage’ – Kolaj Magazine
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