Aaron Robert Baker
My work explores the symmetry between beauty and awkwardness, nature and artifice, happiness and despair, the pleasant and the pathetic. Transformation and anthropomorphization interest me, as does our ability to turn any combination of shapes into a reflection of ourselves and our humanity. I began my “Heads” series in 2019 in an effort to establish a systematic but open-ended process that I can use to render the figure. Working in a consistent format and with a limited vocabulary, I begin each work with the same egg-shaped outline, filling it with circles and lines until a face emerges. I then layer in dots, drips and marks and allow this mark-making, and how it looks as it accumulates, to determine whether a shape is on top, underneath, concave or convex. Associations and implied meanings accumulate and, ultimately, if all goes well, a character is born. Though my approach is process-based, I consider it to be intuitive. Every artwork is an exploration and I am open to surprises.
Artist Bio :
Aaron Robert Baker is a multi-disciplinary and internationally-exhibited artist and independent curator who lives and works in Chicago, IL. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Art in America, Hi-Fructose and New American Painters. Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Baker received his BFA from The University of North Texas and his MFA from The University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he studied under influential art critic Dave Hickey. When he was in the second grade, his teacher told his parents that he had drawn an impressive cheeseburger and that they should enroll him in art classes. Baker has been an artist ever since.
