Fine Art & Multi-Media Visionary
M. Saffell Gardner
M. Saffell Gardner holds BFA and MFA degrees in painting from Wayne State University. A master painter, mixed media artist, muralist, videographer, art historian, curator, lecturer and educator, he teaches at private colleges and community colleges. Mr. Gardner has participated in arts mentoring programs. 2015 Saffell was awarded a Kresge Fellowship. 2014 Saffell was invited to have a survey exhibit at gallery 9338 Campau. Mr. Gardner also participated in Artprize for 2014. Mr. Gardner was invited to Participate in “The Venice Biennale 2013”. Saffell co-curated “Vision in a Cornfield” for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. In 2000, Mr. Gardner was selected as the Chivas Regal Artist in Residence at the Charles H. Wright Museum. A commissioned painting “Door of No Return” is in the museum’s permanent collection as a result of the residency. Commissions include a painted receptacle for Detroit’s “Pretty City” project as well as major commissions for the COBO Center and the Detroit Public Schools. Mr. Gardner’s work is in the permanent collection of The Henry Ford Hospital, Blue Cross Blue Shield, DMC, Total Healthcare, The Federal Reserve Chicago, Renaissance High School and Southeastern High School and Detroit School of the Arts. He has exhibited throughout the United States, Jamaica, Brazil and Ghana, Africa.
“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours.”
John Crowe Ransom
Recent Blog Posts
Communications
“Urban Haiku”
communicate, stop, start, look
dead mans curve right angle
fours signs to departure
Studio Shot
“Morning Studio Visit”
curtain foliage looking for
something beyond the veil
galaxy now ancient future