Claire Anna Baker
Undone
February 19 - March 26, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 19, 2-6pm
Installation View: Claire Anna Baker, Undone
Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Claire Anna Baker titled Undone. Executed in earth tones, this series of interpretive works seeks to capture the experience of being in a storm visually and emotionally, while exploring notions of connection, responsiveness, temporality, and feeling alive.
Baker’s process begins outside the studio, by creating drawings en plein air while experiencing a storm. The sound and feeling of the wind and electricity, the vision of rain cutting across the landscape, the dark clouds concealing the horizon interrupted by flashes of light, the smell of the air, and the uncertainty of the outcome—all become part of the visual language. In the studio, Baker begins the process of translating these drawings into paintings. Unusually large brushes and oversize oil sticks are custom fabricated in order to swiftly carve space with broad, precise, and active strokes. Muddy greens, slate grays, volcanic slag, crushed porphyry, along with the umbers, ochers, and siennas, speed and clash across the surfaces. Pigments mined directly from the earth reflect how a storm binds sky to land. The marks gain the quiddity of the natural forces with each repetition. Atmospheric shimmer is built through layers of translucent pigment and wax washes, and line drawing and tone interact to inhabit, activate, and define the space of the paintings. The intensity of the original physical experience of the storm becomes amplified and sustained in the lasting presence of the works.
For Baker, the experience of the storm and the process of painting are deeply rooted in the most inexplicable and powerful of emotions, love. As the artist notes, “The painting becomes about a feeling of intimate interconnectedness between humans, and between humans and earth. Painting weather becomes about shifting emotional responses within such connection.”
Claire Anna Baker
Bursting Swell, 2022
Pigment, wax, and oil on canvas on panel
42 x 80 inches
Claire Anna Baker (b. 1983 Berkeley, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles. Baker completed her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles, and BA in Visual Art (with Honors) at Brown University, RI. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Artist Grant and Rema Hort Mann Foundation YoYoYo Grant. She has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Moskowitz Bayse, Los Angeles, CA; Edward Cella Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; and Irvine Arts Center, Irvine, CA. Her work is included in the collection of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and has been reviewed and discussed in the Los Angeles Times, Artspace, KCRW Art Talk, and ArtScene.
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