Baker Artist Portfolios

I did a residency at Glo'Art Belgium. They kept 2 of my artworks for their permanent collection.

This body of work is a continuation of my abstrart landscapes in Encaustic and Acrylic.  The Reef Man painting was created for the themed "Super Heros" show  to honor my Father's work for the Chesapeake Bay Oyster restoration program.

Time and my changing perceptions of it are compelling to me.  This interest and pursuit for understanding exposes a self inquiry and thus brings to my work a collaboration of poetics, words and paint.  This current series called Journeys Around the Sun explores that delicious slowing of time that reveals the wonder of the mundane as well as the extraordinary in the human experience, the extraordinary ordinary.  My personal struggle to allow vulnerability is revealed in the layers of the work.
"The knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance".  Rilke

In spring 2019, amidst the Me Too movement, I was solicited to create a piece for an exhibition entitled Superheroes, shown at Y-Art Gallery in Baltimore. Measuring 15” x 30”, Batgirl was created with female empowerment in mind. For inspiration, I chose a vintage illustration of a female bat and used a wallpaper that incorporated women, mothers, and small girls. Alluding to a female sensibility, the surrounding painted border transitions from a soft lavender around the top, down to a light pink bordering the bottom edge.

 
My paintings and drawings are allegorical and narrative with personal and
social emphasis. Themes are many times open ended with multi meanings
and suggestions for the viewer as well as myself. Ambiguity and mystery
are common in my work. Symbolism is evident whenever it appears in
landscapes, still lives, figures, portraits, interiors, or abstractions. These
subjects and symbols are the vehicle for visions with a dreamlike quality. I
many times use a large variety of drawing and paintings mediums within one

The insect can be a symbol of greed, sensual pleasure, precision and many more associations  depending upon the culture context. My focus on insects is two fold. Firstly, the symbolic nature of each bug has me fascianted and ready to explore.  And , secondly, insects create a challenge in depicting their phycial characteristics in an abstract way and still have the viewer "read" the juxtaposed images as a leg or an antenae.  Through the process of using old wallpapers, ripping  up the paper and then reconfiguring it, I feel a new meaning develops from the process.

A video wading through research of answers offered by most major god-related mythologies from human history (as determined by English-Wikipedia). The video is overwhelming with layered conflicting exterior and interior frames. The interior frame is an e-book generated using every image from the Wikipedia pages for ‘God’ and ‘Deities’. The videos filling the exterior frame are the most popular free stock videos available on a high-quality royalty-free stock video website, acting as a sort-of catalog for humanity’s current cultural moment.

DIRT considers the way land is defined and occupied. Using a vintage RISK board game, I replaced the army pieces with various seeds and the deck of cards with an accordion book that incorporates visual elements of the natural world and the nostalgia of childhood. The board itself became a three-dimensional garden in the way of a pop-up book that uses images cut from used gardening books. Flowers, bushes, and trees are pieced together in shapes and colors that mimic the countries outlined on the board.