‘’I’m on two tracks now, considering two types of space,” Gardner explains. “I’m thinking of the atmospheric space that surrounds our world as well as what’s on the low horizon. That’s why I’ve painted a lot of sky, because I want to contrast our little earth against three trillion miles of infinity. Scientists are making so many discoveries about what’s beyond us. Maybe it’s the result of living here,” she sweeps her arms to indicate the 360-degree view that surrounds her studio-” but I look at the sky and I think about what’s beyond us. I know how to look at something and put it down, and it’s taken my whole life to develop that facility.”

“I have a little phrase: ‘I speak for the landscape though the landscape speaks for itself,”’ she says. “I think what I need to say, I say in my paintings. I don’t want to go on about the gorgeous light and the composition. I’m a painterly realist, and I’m an ecologist. I want people to see what’s there and say, ‘Let’s keep it.’  - Sheila Gardner

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