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Mary Craig Gardner
Toronto, Ontario
Oil on canvas
mcraigga@pathcom.com
416.769.3994
Imagining Canada 1
54” x 42”
Oil on canvas
1999
Artist's Statement
Today
I am always in a dream when I paint. Making art lightens my spirit and gives me joy. Unlike life which follows its dynamic law toward disorder, in making art we make order.
Another day
The word 'artist', if applied to myself, causes me anxiety. Very seldom do I convince myself that I have the right to use that word. But I do paint and I do write with great pleasure. Painting and writing focus the mind.
Another day
I see painting as a problem solving task. I live with the tension between leaving colour as form for the pure joy of it, and letting it represent some reality e.g. landscape. When I see a wonderfully executed representational painting I admire the work, the skill, but for me, aesthetically it does not take. It even repels me.
Another day
Painting is labour intensive. Actually painting is more mentally intensive. My mind’s demand for a minimalist approach vies with the sensuous and tactile realities felt by my eye. I used to aim at finding the leading edge and paint from that kind of insight.
Another day
I put on the canvas what I find important within myself. I paint to find the correlative of whatever process is going on inside me that cannot be articulated in words. Even then I am not sure that that is what I am actually doing.
It may take a very long time to complete a work for it has a way of is own. And emerges only after several overlaying takes have been made. Often the subject changes completely.
What the painting is actually about is another matter and is wide open to the viewers' own interpretation.
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