Tim Gardner, "Oil Paintings," Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver, October 15 to November 12, 2016

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Tim Gardner, "Man on Highway, Going for Gas," 2016

oil on canvas, 32.4” x 28” Courtesy of the artist, Monte Clark Gallery and 303 Gallery, New York

A puff of breath condenses in the cooling air of dusk as a solitary man, clad in a parka, trudges down a highway flanked by densely forested mountains. He carries a jerry can. It’s a stirring scene because we can easily imagine being alone in the cold desolation of the Canadian wilderness where danger lurks.

Tim Gardner returned to oil paints about a year ago, years after trading them for the watercolours that brought him international attention. His earlier works depict both camaraderie and bravado between young male friends; in many of them the landscape has a strong presence. He felt encouraged to abandon oils in the late 1990s because watercolours were less associated with contemporary trends in figurative painting, allowing him to develop his own painting language. Now that he is using oils again, he’s content to pick up the thread of a lineage that reaches further back to Caspar David Friedrich and Winslow Homer, artists known for romanticized landscapes or seascapes with a figurative element. Gardner’s figures in this exhibition are often dwarfed by the landscape. In Surfer in Moonlight, the surfer is in danger of crashing against dark rocks; the interaction between the surfer and nature is tangible. However, in Boys on Beach, Saratoga or Father and Son on Beach, the serene landscape is more of a backdrop.

Tim Gardner, "Boys on Beach, Saratoga," 2016

Tim Gardner, "Surfer in Moonlight," 2016

The lineage of Romanticism is woven into the paintings; there’s a sense of nostalgia and subjectivity. Some evoke yearning but also contentment, as with Corvette Night Scene, in which Gardner places himself as a driver who has stepped out to regard the moon while enjoying a cigarette. The plate reads 247 REM, always dreaming. In Father and Son on Beach, there’s a sense of future nostalgia as Gardner imagines his young son as an adolescent. The boy walks behind his father and looks up at him.

Tim Gardner, "Corvette Night Scene," 2016

Tim Gardner, "Father and Son on Beach," 2016

Gardner captures moments that allow us to contemplate our place within beautiful but platitudinous landscapes. In Corvette Night Scene and Man on Highway, Going for Gas there’s a narrative triangle between man, machine and nature. Both scenes reveal sentimentality but the latter also has a subtle humour; Gardner presents a cliché of masculinity then disrupts it. One’s relationship to the landscape drastically changes when a high-speed drive becomes a long, lonely walk