Jennifer Gardner paints the world around her--her enduring inspiration. Whether a wild and untamed landscape; or a landscape nurtured and created by human intervention; or the towering beauty of a city skyline--they all hold a different fascination for Gardner, and entirely different challenges in composition and in the interplay of color and light.
First and foremost, whether landscape, seascape or cityscape, Jennifer Gardner's art is borne always of her initial reaction to color in that environment; it might be an unexpected beautiful, vibrant splash of color, or a contrast of extremes, or the interplay warm and cool hues. Once Gardner's eye has been caught (and the spark ignited!) she searches for the best composition to express her reaction to the scene which has captivated her attention: sometimes the composition is clearly there before her in reality and needs no other explanation, and othertimes Gardner has to adjust the scene, eliminating the unwanted or adding elements for greater impact in order to best express what appealed to her eye in the first place.
Jennifer Gardner's paintings are created with intense and brightly colored soft pastels directly onto sanded colored paper. Applying the pastels onto a colored ground facilitates an interesting additional textural and color element to the painting which helps to unify color and create a harmonious balance which reflects Gardner's emotional response to the natural world around me.
Concerned only with capturing the essence rather than the physical reality of the scene using color, composition and texture, Gardner's work is entirely impressionistic in inspiration with occasional forays into the abstract. However, Gardner believes that in whichever direction each individual piece takes her, her paintings still remain recognizable as connected to the natural or man-made world which Jennifer Gardner observes around her.
