Undone: Lowell Ryan Projects

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 present 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.”