Link to Post:
http://figureground.ca/brett-baker/
Julia Schwartz interviews painter and Painters' Table editor Brett Baker. Thanks to Julia for the opportunity to discuss my work, including the development of my recent miniature paintings.
"Moving from a large studio in the Catskills to a two-room apartment in Manhattan forced me, finally, to consider the role scale played in the work. I had to ask whether could I make serious paintings that were small, and to answer that question I had to try and make some small works and see if they 'measured up' to the large ones. I stretched ten small paintings, the limit that would fit on the apartment wall, and resolved to work on them until the question of scale was answered in the work. I worked on those paintings for four years. Interestingly, my existing visual language continued to evolve and thrive on the smaller surfaces. The size of the marks changed very little, but where they had more or less floated on a large surface they began to interlock, to push and pull against each other and the support. A visual compression emerged that hadn’t been there before, and the paintings began to realize the solidity I originally sought."
Link to Post:
http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2013/03/painting-in-chelsea.html
Joanne Mattera provides an in-depth look at (mostly) abstract painting shows in Chelsea including: Stephen Antonakos: Pillows 1962-63 at Lori Bookstein Fine Art (through March 6), Mara Held at Gary Snyder Gallery, Matthew Weinstein: The Celestial Sea at Sonnabend Gallery, Todd Kelly: My Own Personal Rebus at Asya Geisberg Gallery (through March 9), Peter Wayne Lewis: Paintings from Middle Earth Part IV at Skoto Gallery, Josette Urso: Snow Day at Markel Fine Art (through March 9), Jered Sprecher: I Always Lie at Jeff Bailey Gallery (through March 23), Douglas Witmer: All Kinds of Ways to Your Garden at Blank Space, Brett Baker: Paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Jennifer Wynne Reeves: The Worms in the Walls at Mondrian's House at Bravin Lee Programs (through March 23), Larry Poons: New Paintings at Danese/Loretta Howard Gallery, Shinique Smith: Bold as Love at James Cohan Gallery (through March 16).
Link to Post:
http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2013/01/thin-and-thick-mario-naves-and-brett.html
Sharon Butler blogs about exhibitions by Mario Naves and Brett Baker at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, on view through February 2, 2013.
Butler writes that Naves' "buoyant compositional strategies recall those of his earlier collages, but the smoothly painted, unified surfaces and saturated color of his new work evoke the Indian and Persian miniatures and the 16th-century Netherlandish paintings that [he] considers touchstones." She continues noting that "Baker's paintings are darker and more obsessive than Naves, and they suggest that he is entertaining a philosophical question, trying to convince himself that, despite all practical evidence to the contrary, meaning resides in the process. And so he continues--we all do."
Submitted by Brett Baker on December 18, 2012
Brett Baker, Scarbo, 2009 -2011, oil on canvas, 5 x 4 inches
I want to thank all Painters’ Table readers for making this blog a success over the past two years and also to cordially invite everyone to the opening reception for an exhibition of my paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York on Friday, January 4, 2013 from 6 - 8 pm. The exhibition will run through February 2, 2013. A catalogue with an essay by Jennifer Samet will be available from the gallery.
Submitted by Brett Baker on October 9, 2012
Curating Contemporary is an online exhibition project created by painter Brian Edmonds. The site hosts monthly artist-curated virtual exhibitions. I am pleased to have curated the current show, Focused Field, featuring small paintings by seven artists, Sarah McNulty, Kazimira Rachfal, Dan Roach, Henry Samelson, Altoon Sultan, Ken Weathersby, and Brett Baker. The exhibition essay, available at Curated Contemporary, is also posted below. Click on each artist's names in the text for a link to their works in the show.
Ken Weathersby, Time Is the Diamond, 2011, wood, linen, acrylic, paper collage, small works on wood shelves, from 2.5 to 8 inches tall (courtesy of the artist)
Expanding the visual field is one of the essential innovations of the New York School. This innovation redefined scale in painting so decisively that subsequent movements including Color Field, Pop, Minimalism, and even installation art all adopted it without question. Yet, while nearly every other aspect of abstract painting has been exhaustively investigated and re-imagined, examples of focusing the field to a small scale have been isolated and few. Miniature abstract paintings are almost non-existent.
My first encounters with Abstract Expressionism’s signature expansiveness, in works by de Kooning and Rothko, made me want to be an abstract painter and convinced me that scale was a crucial component of the language of abstract painting. For a over a decade, I painted almost exclusively on a large scale, until circumstances forced me to radically scale down my work.
I moved from a large studio upstate to a small Manhattan apartment that functioned as both a studio and a home for my family. The change was fortuitous, though, for it opened my eyes to new painting problems. Instead of rehashing the problem of creating an intimate experience from immense scale, I concerned myself with preserving that immensity on an intimate scale. At first, a two foot square painting felt like a postage stamp to me, an impossibly small area. Ten years later, many of my works measure only 4 x 5 inches.
Recently, it’s been a pleasure to discover other painters - Sarah McNulty, Kazimira Rachfal, Dan Roach, Henry Samelson, Altoon Sultan, and Ken Weathersby - equally invested in small, even miniature scale abstraction. Though sharing a similar format, each artist challenges and extends the language of abstract painting in a different way. These painters use scale not as a commentary, but rather to push the boundaries of gestural abstraction, site-specific painting, materials, and process while forging fresh connections with painting’s past.
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2012/03/brett-baker-march-2012.html
Thanks to Zachary Keeting and Christopher Joy for meeting me at East River State Park, Williamsburg to discuss my work for their incredible video blog Gorky's Granddaughter.
Link to Post:
http://studiocritical.blogspot.com/2011/05/brett-baker.html
Interview with Painters' Table editor Brett Baker about his work and studio practice.
"Studio spaces have definitely impacted my work. In 2003 I moved from a huge, dream studio in upstate New York to a tiny New York apartment... I still wanted to make large paintings and thought I could, perhaps, make 'big' small paintings. At the time small paintings for me meant sketches or studies. I stretched ten small canvases and resolved to work on them until they lived up to the larger works."
