Details:
① Artwork:
Memories and a Small Body of Water
This drawing depicts female figures floating in the air around a pool where a deep blue figure bathes; the pool is upheld by animated forms. The artist's works explore an in-between existence, one that hovers halfway between a physical and spiritual women-centered world. The fluid and feminine forms that adapt and plant themselves firmly in this composition are representatives of a restorative environment that exists after conflict—one that is ripe for new growth and possibility.
A draftswoman, printmaker and painter, Lydia Baker creates utopian and matriarchal worlds that redefine modern perceptions of joy, acceptance and home. These imagined feminine environments feature landscapes that echo the interiors of bodies as well as figures that explore and adapt themselves to their world. The artist works intuitively, without a fully planned composition, allowing both the artist and the viewer to “[savor] the landscape and the pendulum between curiosity and stability.”
Specs:
③ Artist:
Lydia Baker’s work depicts surreal and symbolic dreamscapes where two female protagonists explore time, memory, and desire to find respite in a romantic and spiritual connection. Their environments mirror the internal cycles of the female body with their fluid and feminine undulating peaks, deep crevices, and pools of water. Lovingly rendered in colored pencil, each drawing creates a women-centered world where the complexities of human interiority get interpreted through utopic fantasy.
Lydia Baker was born in 1990 in Richmond, VA, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in Communication Arts & Design from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 2013 and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Arts in New York, NY in 2020.
Baker has shown her drawings at Massey Klein Gallery in New York, NY; Trotter&Sholer in New York, NY; Fortnight Institute in New York, NY; and Wilder Gallery in London, UK.
Her work has been featured in publications such as The Wick, West Branch, New American Paintings, Artnet, Juxtapoz, Art Maze, and Artsy.
Baker was a recipient of NYFA’s City Artist Corps Grant, R&F Paint’s Art Heals Grant, and the Post-Graduate Chubb Fellowship. She’s been awarded residencies at Sugarlift Gallery, the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center.
