Heidi Schwandt Garner

Biography

My artistic talent is inherited, with singing, composing music, playing musical instruments and painting in both my fathers and mother’s side of the family. A natural ability to draw started to show during my primary school years and by the time I was at secondary school some of my fellow students and my teachers were requesting me to do drawings and paintings for them.
The only formal art training I have completed is V.O.P (Vocational Orientation Period), year 11 during 1979 at Frankston Technical School (now TAFE). I have learnt through my own experience, calling myself a ‘self taught’ artist. Working with mediums like pastel, acrylics, ink, watercolour, nail polish, biro, screen ink, marker pens and colour pencils with a subject matter as varied.
My art has been a hobby, until in 2006 when I entered into NEIS (New Enterprise Incentive Scheme) and completed a Small Business Management course. My hobby became my business.
In 2011 I turned my hand to tattooing. I worked from a few local tattoo shops and in 2016 I opened my own private tattoo studio, which also doubles as a mini art gallery to showcase my work.
Today, with restrictions and uncertainties, I find myself needing to immerse myself in my art again. I will continue to tattoo, but my painting calls me. It heals me. I get to immerse myself in my surroundings and re-create the magic that is often lost on the eye, but only seen with the soul.