Tim Gardner was born in Iowa City in 1973 and grew up in Canada. He received a BFA from the University of Manitoba in 1996 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1999. Since the late nineties, Gardner’s watercolors, pastels, and oil paintings have explored a specifically North American middle-class world of masculinity and the pictorial conventions used to document it. His early source material comprises photographic snapshots, either found or taken by the artist, that capture the rites of passage in which his subjects partake. In the years since, Gardner’s work has rekindled a sublime aesthetic of Romanticism, depicting his subjects engaged with the natural and urban environment. Nocturnal scenes influenced by Japanese woodblock prints further explore the identity of his figures amid sobering landscapes.
Read MoreGardner has exhibited his work internationally at such institutions as The National Gallery, London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Basel, and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Canada, among others.
