Ginnie Gardiner

The Artifact Color Series represents an expansion and focus on my painterly process and my ongoing studies involving the concept of phenomenal transparency, with opaque mixtures achieving the illusion of transparency in the medium of oil paint. They are inspired by Josef Alber’s Homage to the Square series. These collages are created entirely with painted woodblock papers. They are the distillation of the optically observed mixtures from a very specific painting executed at a unique time formed by the seasons and local weather. This process feels almost like writing in a diary to me, personal and experience driven.
Titled Interlusion, my new montage studies combine the Artifact Color Series abstractions with a return to tromp l’oeil paint handling in the interest of capturing the subtle gradations of the veils of color as they arc and flow over the graphic composition of the Artifact Color Series with some transparency. It is a hybrid style adapted to capture the transparency effects and the multiple layers of the colors and their interactions. The grounding of the collage color study, a demonstration of phenomenal transparency, is re-informed by the layering of the veils and an introduction of literal transparency. I’m deciding how much transparency to introduce and in what areas I should preserve the chromatic intensity and more opaque colors of the scarves. There is a feeling of landscape that is inescapable in that there is a sense of atmosphere between the scarf and the painted collage. It is the synthesis of observation, imagination and dream-scape.

In all of my paintings, I have sought color mastery and color is the subject of my work. Both Josef Albers and Charles W. Hawthorne were obsessed with creating the illusion of transparency in the opaque medium of oil paint. Both their teachings and their daily practice continue to inspire me today.

©Ginnie Gardiner