ALEXANDRA GARDNER | Carol’s Carnations
Oil on Board
29 x 24 cms / 11½ x 9½ inches
Signed Gardner (lower left)
Alexandra Gardner painted Carol’s Carnations during a period in which still life became central to her practice, allowing sustained attention to structure, colour relationships and surface. Carnations have a long history within European still-life painting, valued for their durability and complex petal forms, and Gardner’s choice places her work in dialogue with this tradition while remaining firmly contemporary. Gardner’s approach reflects her interest in the physical properties of paint and the formal arrangement of everyday subjects, developed through sustained studio practice rather than observational study alone.
Alexandra Gardner (b. 1945, Glasgow) is a significant figure in post-war Scottish painting, recognised for a practice grounded in close observation, sustained studio discipline and an engagement with art-historical precedent. Raised in a working-class environment in Glasgow, she showed early aptitude for drawing and painting, leading to her admission to the Glasgow School of Art in 1963. There she studied during a formative period for Scottish figurative painting, under tutors including David Donaldson, whose emphasis on structure, tone and sustained looking left a lasting imprint.
After graduating in 1967, Gardner joined the teaching staff at the Glasgow School of Art, remaining for over two decades. Alongside teaching, she developed a body of work spanning still life, figurative studies and interior scenes, including works inspired by American diners and barbershops encountered during periods of travel. Her painting is informed by close study of artists such as Uccello and Vermeer, particularly in relation to spatial organisation and tonal control, while maintaining a distinctly personal visual language.
Gardner’s life experiences, including complex personal relationships and serious health challenges, form an underlying context to her work without overt narrative. Her paintings are held in major public and corporate collections, including Glasgow Museums and the Royal Bank of Scotland, and her contribution has been central to the visibility of women painters in contemporary Scottish art.
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