Her paintings, often inspired by subjects in old photographs but manipulated to "create scenes which can challenge a contemporary viewer", have been variously described as "disquiet" and having a "haunting quality".
Deirdre Hanna wrote the following about Gartner: "Award-winning essayist, Alberto Manguel, put Calgary-based Winnipeg native Marianna Gartner in the international limelight when he chose her as the only Canadian artist to profile in Reading Pictures, a 2002 book that also looks at paintings by historical giants including Pablo Picasso and Caravaggio. For her first solo show since that book's publication, Sable-Castelli's Stepping Out, Gartner pulls back from the tattooed babies and circus freaks that first caught Manguel's attention."[1] "Instead, she focuses on what is both disturbed and disturbing in more banal (at first glance, anyway) imagery -- like the 19th-century, tweed-and-mutton-chop-whisker-sporting gunman in I'd Rather Be Hunting, or the surreal little girl in a lacy pinafore of St. Margaret And The Dragon." "Gartner's fascination with Victorian curios is very much in evidence in these near-monochromatic canvases, and as her references get more subtle, the parallels with John Tenniel's illustrations for Alice In Wonderland become more apparent."[1]
