Dina Gardner

Blue and Weathered - German Expressionist Pastel Portrait Painting

2025

Dina Gardner has always been fascinated by how artists, whether they are painters, musicians, writers or anyone with artistic gifts, work through their creative process. She is fascinated that the process of 'creating' is different for every artist, regardless of their medium.

Her process for painting with pastels starts with music and her musical taste is wide and varied. Once the music is on in her studio, there is a lot of singing and dancing (neither done particularly well) that happens while she paints. She usually works from a photograph which she sketches on a sanded piece of pastel paper. She takes a lot of creative license, often adding or deleting objects in the photograph. Dina’s first layer, commonly referred to as the underpainting, is applied in dry pastel and then washed down with a paintbrush dipped in alcohol. Once this layer dries, she lays down layer upon layer of pastel, often letting the original underpainting peek through. Once in a while there are happy accidents. Sometimes there are tragic outcomes. But all the time she is grateful that she found this creative outlet at this stage of her life.

Dina’s paintings reflect objects she is drawn to: oceans and water, skies and clouds, trees, rock formations, marshes and meadows. When she paints from a photo reference or even when painting plein air, she is not painting what the subject looks like but rather what her response is to the subject.

Dina splits her time between Boston, MA, where she has lived for more than 40 years and her home in Manhattan Beach, CA, close to where she was raised. Both places provide her with inspiration and untold amounts of visual stimulation. Dina’s goal is to capture the beauty she observes around her and to express that beauty through her paintings.