biography

Danielle Gardner was born in 1972 in North York. She began drawing and painting at an early age. Always interested in becoming a teacher, she took art courses in Toronto and volunteered for a variety of art centres, including Harbourfront Centre, the Ontario Science Centre, and the Royal Ontario Museum, where she met her future husband on Philosophers' Walk. The Royal Ontario Museum especially encouraged her ambitions as an artist. From the age of twelve, she studied its many artifacts. At that age as well, she had her first exhibition, at York Mills Collegiate Institute--a collection of drawings based on the ROM artifacts. Using these drawings and other works, she auditioned for the Claude Watson School For the Arts and attended this program within Earl Haig Secondary School. Here she had the opportunity to major in experimental and fine art, with a focus on painting. Graduating with honours, she went on to York University, where she found time to show her work in many exhibitions, including “A Walk through the Storm,” featured in Slate Magazine.

She transferred to the University of Western Ontario’s Fine Art Program, which helped her to focus on photography, painting, computer art and paper making. She continued to show her work during this time. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree, she completed her Bachelor of Education at Althouse College and was hired by the Thames Valley District School Board to teach Art and media-related courses at the secondary level. For the next four years, Danielle taught at Glendale High School in Tillsonburg; however, she wanted to work in Ingersoll where she lives, so that she could focus on her art and the Ingersoll community. She has been teaching visual arts for five years at Ingersoll District Collegiate Institute.

Some of the work you are seeing is from an exhibition June 2004 entitled “Killarney Enchantment”. Danielle currently has work on exhibition in The Tea Haus, in London Ontario. She teaches private lessons in the evenings where childern and adults can work in a nurturing environment. Her work, while always personal in its expression, touches on many provocative themes. She works in various media, including graphite, acrylic, watercolour, photography, and computer art.

All images copyright: Danielle Gardner
Contact at: danielle@philosopherswalk.ca