Baker Artist Portfolios

Small work allows the experience of getting up close and personal with the artwork. The size of the artwork forces one to go in and really look. The “Post Card Series” was created to do just this, attempting to allow the audience the opportunity to see, feel and dissect each element on the “cards”. Loew Cornell oil pastel, plaster gauze, caran d’ACHE water soluble crayon, Daler Rowney acrylic ink, Golden acrylic polymer, Gel ink, and polymer wood glue are melded into original collages on 140lb. gsm archival cold pressed watercolor paper and archival fine parchment paper.

Strange as it may seem, it has taken most of the twentieth century for collage to be taken seriously as a major art form. It is now clear that a technical miracle has taken place in the past century. Of all the art media that originated, collage is one of the most far-reaching. Collage was one of the first media to recycle existing materials. No one artist has been credited with the origin of collage, because it occurred spontaneously at the beginning of this century. The elements of collage and assemblage are separately noticeable which makes them quintessential modern media.

The Mixed Media Collages on Paper are in their original state from inception. Working on paper allows me to be more productive / prolific. Newspaper pages make up the substrate and background field of the work as an element for some of the work. The substrate is a very forgiving, non consuming
space saver. The text comes from various sources, including Novel and Encyclopedia pages. One has to be conscious of the negative impact encountered when creating and storing art works.
So, there is a balancing act when the choice of media is determined.

This group of small paintings (the entire series was 27 paintings in total) in acrylic, pen, and collage on paper mounted on wood was created in 2007. I was digging through some old papers and found an old geology textbook. Inspired by the abstractions of some of the imagery, I based this work on reactions to diagrams.