Gretchen Markle was born and raised in a small mining town in Northern Ontario.  In 1976, she moved to Vancouver Island.  The  isolation and beauty of both locales have had a profound and lasting effect on her art making.   Her earliest inspiration came from Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, particularly Lawren Harris, who captured the soul of her native Algoma in paint.  Later influences include such artists as Richard Diebenkorn, Wolf Kahn, and Fritz Scholder, as well as lesser-known contemporaries Will Julsing and Marianne Brabanski.