Angela Gardner studied Fine Art at Cardiff College of Art, Wales and gained a Master of Art in Visual Art from Queensland College of Art, Australia specialising in printmaking. Since graduating in 2002 she has been a professional practising artist often using an approach used by John Cage, a process of openness and chance, or as he said “I gave up making choices. In their place I put questions.”

Since 2016 she has worked within an umbrella project, The Now Solid Air, exploring aspects of a  climate changed world to emphasize fragility through beauty: clouds (The Weight of Clouds, laser-engraved woodblock series 2020), weather maps (Weather Station laser-engraved woodblock series 2022), flowers (Vanitas digital print series and laser-engraved woodblock series 2024) and forests (Caiseal Chaoilte laser-engraved woodblock and digital series 2025). Beauty and the Sublime are both contentious subjects however the purpose is to draw the viewer in rather than to overwhelm with despair.

Angela Gardner is a multiple finalist in Libris Awards: Australian Artists' Book Prize Exhibition Australia and exhibitor at the International Printmaking Conference IMPACT, Manly Library Artist’s Book Award and Southern Cross University Acquisitive Artists' Book Award exhibition. She has been a Visiting Artist, at the Australian National University, School of Art, Canberra, University Wales Institute, School of Art & Design, Cardiff UK, Centre for Fine Print Research, University of West of England and AHA Creative in Residence ‘Conflict in History’ UQ Art Museum/ HPRC 2014.

Printmaking Residencies to Masereel Centrum, in Belgium awarded in both 2020 and 2024 enabled Gardner to expand into laser-engraved woodblock printing. In terms of visual composition she is inspired by Tim Morton’s “nothing can be grasped, or accessed, all at once in its entirety.” How do you approach landscape in a climate changed world, with its “feeling of not-quite-reality.” And in terms of method heartened by Morton’s description that “thought is not the only access mode” .

As a writer and an artist, she has a long-standing interest in the intersection of text and image, learning letterpress at the San Francisco Center for the Book, to bring both sides of her practice together in artist books, a form she exhibits in as well as prints.