The Enfolded: Collage Paintings by Ginnie Gardiner

My working method since the mid-1990s has been to create equivalent color palettes from my collage and montage studies for translation into the medium of oil paint. 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.

“A century later, I find myself contemplating Cezanne. Specifically, his use of passage shapes: abstract shapes that echo neighboring shapes, but are themselves carved from the negative space adjacent. Illusionism takes upon itself a different mantle as it sublimates itself to the abstraction that is foundational to its creation. This is the space I found myself exploring as my earlier figure-ground work began to define the ground itself, and vice versa.” – 2010 Statement about the following works, which were created 2008-2010.