Project Room: Tim Gardner at 303 Gallery

303 Gallery in Chelsea has given its Project Room to new work by Tim Gardner. The show runs September 10 through October 24, 2026, and brings together watercolors of three cities: New York, London and Los Angeles.

Gardner was born in 1973 in Iowa City and earned a BFA at the University of Manitoba and an MFA at Columbia University. He lives and works in Alberta, Canada. For more than thirty years he has used watercolor to turn photographs into meticulously observed paintings, usually of ordinary places and everyday experience rather than famous sights. In 2023 the Winnipeg Art Gallery staged Tim Gardner: The Full Story, his first major retrospective, covering three decades of work. His paintings are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Canada, among others.

The new pictures are based on photographs the artist took over a number of years in each city. The places are specific, but the paintings are not fixed to the present: in several cases the skylines, buildings and surroundings have since changed. Water recurs across the show, linking city and coastal scenes with a quiet rhythm and underlining the passage of time already held inside the photographs.

Seven watercolors, all made in 2026, are on view. New York is represented by Bethesda Fountain. London supplies Bermondsey St., Tower Bridge Sunrise and Thames Sunset. Los Angeles appears in L.A. Beach Scene, Surfer at Venice Pier and Under Venice Pier. The works are modest in scale, roughly 12 to 22 inches on their longest side before framing; Thames Sunset is the largest at about 26 1/2 by 32 inches framed.

The format suits the Project Room: a small space where the fine handling of watercolor can be seen up close, and where familiar scenes become studies of landscape, time and perception. The gallery is at 555 West 21st Street, an easy stop on a Chelsea gallery walk.