Micaela Gardner
I was born in Tucson, Arizona in March 1967 of New Mexican Hispanic and Pennsylavania Scottish heritage. My family was rather nomadic during my childhood, having twelve different homes all over the Southwest and California, by the time I was fifteen.
I showed early aptitude for the arts and studied dance and art in whatever capacity available to me from age six. With visual art particularly, I am largely self-taught.
At sixteen I left my family in Santa Fe, and then moved to San Francisco, thirsty for different forms of dance and experience. I began to show and sell my paintings in cafes and bookshops not long after.
In 1989, I moved to Oakland. In 1991 I had my first notable solo painting show. I continued to show regularly in the Bay Area, enjoying a modest career of exhibition and studio sales for many years.
In 2011 I moved back to Santa Fe, where I danced and painted until early 2020. I now live in Santa Cruz, California.
My Process
I am compelled in a practice of painting that would appear to seek in its imagery a nether world of thought and being that exists outside of time and in a psychic, poetic space of reflection and fancy. I generate new work in an automatic, thoughtless manner- often carving an under drawing with charcoal and then following a trance path of plane and color-building that often results in a kind of landscape. At times the result is purely surface abstraction that does not dwell on any kind of perspective and is more about the painting as an independent object, innocent and with no known or articulated references. I find my pieces cryptic, fluid, gestural, transparent and insubstantial in an alluring way. They whisper visions that avoid the physical realities of our diurnal world and also wonder at the faintness and passing of our culture's works, or edifices, as delicately succumbing to the landscape where all is eventually wind-eroded geology. I paint ruins or the suggestion of ruins quite a lot. There is a shimmering statement in broken and time-abandoned structures, something about the folly and conceit of human endeavor weighing against the indifference of the physical universe. I am interested in the breathing life of the earth itself. My paintings are often about its survival, subtle details, perception-shaped landscapes and mutant flora and fauna, viewed through a misty, ecstatic lens. I am interested in the alchemical becoming inherent in my imagery, particularly in the figuration. As per Jung's ideation regarding dream imagery and it's psychic relationship with alchemy, I believe imagery has the power we foster in it to transform and influence the work of soul.
Education:
High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Santa Cruz, California 1985
San Francisco City College, Arts and Humanities 1986-1988
Exhibitions
Milad, Santa Fe- solo shows, March 2018 and June 2019
Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe- solo show February 2016
Santa Fe Artists Collective- solo show April 2016
Denis’ Shop Gallery, Berkeley- Solo show December 2008-January 2009
Ghost Town Gallery, Oakland- Solo show October-December 2008
Water, 5634 College Ave, Oakland- 2 person show, 2008
Maison Nouveaux, Oakland- 2 person show, October 2007
Grasshopper, Oakland- Solo Installation 2004-2006
Luka Gallery, Oakland- 2-Person Show 2005
Turn of the Century Fine Art, Berkeley:
Group shows: 1991, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999
Solo Shows: 1991, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009
Geo Kay, Oakland Two Solo Shows, 1999 & 2001
San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, San Francisco Two Group Shows in 1999
Carrara’s Gallery, Emeryville Solo Show 1991