Mary C. Gardner Watercolors

Mary Catherine Gardner has loved to draw and paint since early childhood. She grew up surrounded by her grandmother’s oil paintings and the drawings and paintings of family friends. However, it was not until she entered Austin College in Sherman, Texas, that she began to see art as possibly her life’s work. In 1987 she transferred to the University of Texas at Austin to study graphic design and advertising photography.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1989. She began Apple-Gardner Design, her own graphic design business, in 1991. She and her husband Scott moved back to Austin in 1995, where she has continued to work in the design field. Some of her logos, ads, and brochures have been distributed world wide as well as in the Austin marketplace.

Over the last few years, the focus of her business has shifted. She has begun to do what she had always wanted to do: just paint!  She took her first watercolor instruction in Corpus Christi with the watercolorist Jo Schwend, and has continued to study and experiment with the medium.

For her original paintings, Mary Catherine favors Arches 100% rag paper in 300 pound cold pressed, but also likes experimenting with other types of watercolor paper. She uses the highest quality watercolor paints and papers, and acid free materials. Sequentially numbered limited edition prints are produced by the artist in her graphic design studio and are printed on watercolor paper using archival quality inks. A number of smaller signed open edition prints are also available, as are signed notecards.