Grace Gardner Retrospective 2004
A retrospective exhibition of the work of Grace Garner, artists and painter. The Mariner's Gallery St.Ives, Cornwall, UK
1920 - 2013American artist and painter Grace Gardner left Chicago, where she was an established successful artist, in 1984. She moved to the United Kingdom and settled in Cornwall where she joined the art communities of St Ives and Truro.
Chiefly known as an abstract artist and a colourist she liked occasionally to return to the real world of still life and figure work. Collage, etching and monoprints are also among techniques she used. The grid had been an obsession since childhood.
"People ask if I paint everyday, and my answer is I'm painting all the time. A lot of my painting problems I solve not at the easel but doing something entirely unrelated to painting."
In recent years Grace exhibited almost exclusively at the 'New Gallery' Portscatho, Cornwall but had also shown in Chicago, Rome, Poland, London and St Ives Cornwall. A good selection of her work can also be seen in Cornwall in the collection owned by the Falmouth Municipal Art Gallery.
Brian Stewart, former director of Falmouth Art Gallery, introduced his review of Grace Notes with the statement 'Grace Gardner can make colours dance. She spreads great joy through her vibrant and innovative paintings...in a long and distinguished career Grace has embraced a wide variety of art, but it is as an abstract painter that she is now chiefly known...' Her portrait painted by the artist Chester Bratten is in the permanent collection of the Falmouth Art Gallery, alongside a large collection of her own paintings, known as The Grace Gardner Gift, representing work painted since 1961.