Vanessa Gardiner
Path Line 10, 61 x 92 cm, Acrylic on board
For information about Vanessa Gardiner's exhibition in Greece click
here.
Vanessa Gardiner is a painter who is captivated both by the beauty of
the landscapes on which her work is based and by the processes involved
during the making of the pictures.
“In a sense for me they go hand-in-hand: the immediacy of drawing
directly from the seemingly haphazard natural subject matter with the
careful selection and ordering of the compositions back in the studio.” Vanessa
Gardiner, 2008.
Concentrating on the singular coastlines around north Cornwall and more
recently Co Mayo in Ireland, she has become increasingly aware of the
connecting elements found within these landscapes. Recent
trips to both Egypt and Athens have also focused her interest in the
geometry of architecture and its relationship with both the landscape
and the visual language she uses within her work.
The processes involved in making the paintings are significant: she works
in acrylic on board which gives her the freedom to change the composition
of a painting if necessary by cutting it down and not restricting the
work to a prescribed format. Frequently she re-draws the image,
scouring and sanding back the paint until the surface becomes abraded
and enlivened, taking on a beautiful patina and revealing qualities of
its own.