*1963 Winnipeg, Canada – lives in Victoria, Canada

Gartner grew up in Calgary in a family of Hungarian immigrants. In the mid-1980s she studied painting and photography at the local university. Her artistic expression was influenced by the perception of minimalism and conceptual art. On the other hand, Gartner has from the very start paid attention to figurative art, which favours classical portrait art and draws from the European art of the past centuries, with its symbols and multifaceted semantic categories. The works of the Canadian have started appearing at exhibitions in Europe only a few years ago, the highlight of which was a large exhibition in The Belvedere, in Vienna, organised in 2011. Before that, the artist’s works were exhibited almost exclusively in Canada and the United States. Her paintings capture the interrelation between the public space, staging, and illusion. Gartner established herself as a renowned contemporary portrait painting artist.