Brian Stewart, former director of Falmouth Art Gallery, introduced his review of Grace Notes with the statement 'Grace Gardner can make colours dance. She spreads great joy through her vibrant and innovative paintings...in a long and distinguished career Grace has embraced a wide variety of art, but it is as an abstract painter that she is now chiefly known...' Her portrait painted by the artist Chester Bratten is in the permanent collection of the Falmouth Art Gallery, alongside a large collection of her own paintings, known as The Grace Gardner Gift, representing work painted since 1961.

Gardner is an American artist from Chicago, best known for her 'grid' paintings, who came to live in Cornwall in 1984. She settled in Flushing, near Falmouth. She is widely travelled, particularly in Europe. A trip to Japan in the early 1980s inspired her to experiment with the Chinese collage technique known as 'chine colle' from which she created a distinctive series of etchings. In St Ives, Roy WALKER encouraged her to develop the technique of monoprinting, which she uses to great effect.

Her work is held in collections in the USA, Europe and the Far East.

Grace Gardner died aged 93 in July 2013, after a short illness.