Ginnie Gardiner
About the Artist
For four decades, New York-based artist Ginnie Gardiner has explored the infinite possibilities of color, light and space. After 30 years working in a Chelsea loft, her move to Catskill, New York in 2005 opened her practice to a new environment-fueling sun-drenched, rigorously composed works where figural elements meet abstraction. Natural light is a key component in Gardiner's process. Shadows from 3-dimensional studio setups become dynamic compositions translated through photography, digital refinement and optically observed pigment mixtures into richly orchestrated paintings. A longtime multimedia thinker, she has integrated digital tools into her practice for decades - always in the service of paint's expressive power. A new 150-page book about Gardiner’s studio practice has been published, Featuring 56 full-color artwork pages and an essay by Wendy Smith, titled 'Ginnie Gardiner: Change and Continuity', this book is a comprehensive showcase of Gardiner’s work over the past eight years, and included a full Chronology and Index of images.
Artist Statement
I am interested in the way the spaces around an object define its contours, and the dialog between two and three dimensionality. I use three-dimensional studies to further my explorations of color, light, and form in two-dimensional paintings and collages. I play with folded, curved, and cut-out pieces of paper, creating shapes that interact with each other and cast shadows on the support material. Shadows are usually considered as negative space, but in my studies, they become distinctive shapes that I balances with light-based shapes, considering the two kinds of shapes on an equal basis.
As I’ve gotten deeper into my recent Interspace series, I’ve decided to incorporate drawn elements directly into my paintings. In October 2024, I started embedding black-and-white graphic images in my paintings: light bulbs, shells, vases, architectural details from my home, the plaster vessels in my garden—my personal iconography. I want to incorporate my sensibility as a drafts person as well as a painter, to bring something organic and intimate back into the painting process.
