Whitney Gardner – “Calico” Introduction

Hello and welcome to my studio here in Twentynine Palms, California. My name is Whitney Gardner, and I'd like to talk a little bit today about this collection of work that I've created over the last year, uh, debuting here on Western Gallery. Um, the whole collection is inspired by this place called the Calico Mountains, just outside of Barstow, California. In the Mojave Desert. And this is a place I was taken to as a child by my grandfather and my father to go hiking and shooting and camping and exploring old abandoned mines. The area stayed in my memory because the hillsides and the surface of the mountains have these brightly colored minerals. So we have purple and pink and turquoise and orange and white all sort of mixed in into the landscape. And as I developed as a landscape painter, this— my memory kept drawing on this place that I visited as a kid. So when I returned, everything was just as I had remembered and, you know, even more beautiful than my childhood memory could absorb. So ensued this entire collection 7 pieces in all, 4 here because I have a very small studio. I couldn't fit it all onto the wall or in within this camera frame.