ABOUT
Bernard Trainor is a landscape designer and multidisciplinary artist living on the Central Coast of California. In his private garden studio, Trainor stewards his prolific creative energy into one integrated practice across painting, sculpture, design, and installation.
He is the founder and creative director of Ground Studio, a landscape architecture practice with studios in Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Napa, and one of the country’s most celebrated and masterful landscape designers. Like his gardens, Trainor is wild, humble, unrestrained, and experimental. He is attuned to seasons, natural systems and pattern language — both of the earth and within himself.
Like the great Earthwork pioneers of the 1960’s and 70’s, he is engaged in profound and sacred observation of the land — the nuanced intersections where nature and human collaboration converge.
Raised on the Mornington Peninsula along Australia’s rugged Southeastern Coast near the city of Melbourne, Trainor developed an enduring awareness and curiosity about the potent landscapes there, inspiring his imagination from a young age.
Influenced by memory, climate change, drought and fires, his work explores the lasting images and dramatic changes he has observed — and absorbed — living on the edge of the Australian and California coastlines. His paintings aim to capture the complex margins between what is natural and what is man-made, the tension and beauty that co-exist when the lines are blurred, and the struggle for survival.
Trainor’s work is in private collections and has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States.
GROUND STUDIO
Bernard Trainor is the founding principal and design director of Ground Studio, a team of artists and designers working together to envision and craft contextual California landscapes, thoughtfully balancing the character of the land, the identity of the architecture, and the lifestyles of people who live there. Designing in a range of scales from compact urban gardens to expansive rural sites, our designs inspire a deep connection with the land.
Drawing on thirty-five years of passionate commitment to the study and practice of landscape design Trainor has completed four academic programs, practiced professionally in three countries, and continues to lecture extensively on the subject of Landscape Design throughout the world.