Visual Language Features Andrew Baird January 2015

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Visual Language

contemporary fine art

Andrew Baird

January 2015 Volume 4 No. 1

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Photos on Cover and this page byLydia Bittner-Baird http://bairdstudios.com/

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The Value of Line Andy Baird

http://bairdstudios.com/

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Andy Baird “The Value of Line”

I was born in Denver, Colorado. There is a thing about being a long-time Colorado family, so I like to point out that I am a fifth-generation Colorado native. The first Baird came here in 1867. Colorado has always been my home, and I cannot think of any other place as home.

I knew I would be an artist when I was seven. I used to watch my aunt paint horses, and I won a schoolwide art contest in second grade. After high school, I went to a commercial art school. I discovered a love for oils and figure painting, and I went to the University of Northern Colorado for my degrees in Art Education.

As a freshman, I ended up in graduate-level painting courses, along with a few required under-grad courses. By my sophomore year I had to catch up on required courses, one of which was ceramics.

I was not happy, until I learned that ceramics involved using a wheel and kilns. I loved working on the wheel and my painting fell by the wayside. My master’s project was on Native American pottery, and I figured out the secret to Maria Martinez’s metallic-black hand-polished finish. My pots were hand polished, disassembled and reassembled, resulting in ancient look.

By the time I became a high school teacher, galleries were selling my high-end pottery. Robert Redford bought my first pot sold in my Santa Fe gallery, and that got me national attention.

When blown-glass overtook the pottery market, I returned to painting, always looking for current trends. When I travel, I visit galleries and look for interesting and intriguing art. I like to get the pulse of what the nation is thinking.

I had a student so advanced that he needed new, challenging assignments. He made excellent contour drawings, so I asked him to “draw” a face by scribbling, without an outline, using chalk pastels. This became a standard assignment in my advanced drawing classes. I was inspired to work with the technique myself, using liquid paint.

http://bairdstudios.com/

My high school let me paint in an empty classroom in the summer. I spread canvases on the floor and walked on them, experimenting with different paints and tools. Dribbling paint prevented the precision needed for small subjects, so I worked on large canvases. My process evolved into walking around a stretched canvas, better control over the streaming, being able to visualize the image from a distance, and creating fun, new images. My first show was a success, so I felt that I was working on the right art at the right time.

My paintings are sometimes compared to Jackson Pollack’s. Long before I started this technique, I had seen reproductions of Pollack’s paintings, and I did not care for them. After seeing Pollack’s original work, I became an absolute fan. I love how the many layers of paint create depth to his paintings.

There is also a connection to Chuck Close, whose pixel-like sections compose portraits, and GeorgesPierre Seurat, who used dots of paint to compose scenes. Optical blending enables the perception of the image. I might call my work “Seurat meets Jackson Pollack meets Chuck Close”.

My work is a branch of the American Pop Art tradition, similar to Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans.

I talked to friends, clients, and artists, and noticed what is popular in check-out lines. That led me to deliberately work with a glamour look, almost the commercial look from fashion magazines. I follow the overall Pop Art philosophy, putting art in daily life, off the pedestal.

I’m selective about the images needed for that “look”. I’m inspired by ads, photos with the right light, shade and image, or students or friends with promising faces. Whatever the source, it’s up to me to create the look of popular culture in my paintings.

I also paint images of things that had a big impact on my teenage years – the Statue of Liberty, the Campbell’s Soup can. I met Andy Warhol at a show in Denver. Warhol wrote a dedication to me in a copy of his book (Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again), “To Andy from Andy”, with a little Campbell’s Soup can drawing. Meeting him made such an impression on me, and that’s why I’m so glad to be able to exhibit the Pop art character of

Right Page: La Gitana

http://bairdstudios.com/

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Andy Baird “The Value of Line”

Angela King Gallery, New Orleans

http://bairdstudios.com/

My studio is a wonderful, old, pine-paneled cabin in Evergreen, Colorado. Each time I visit a painting, I drip paint either to lose the image or strengthen it. I build layers of color until I see in the painting that perfect quality that I'm looking for. After a month of work, a completed painting will contain thirty to forty colors. The beauty of the process is that the face appears with a personality, a life of its own.

I love to create. I've been an artist of many genres: a painter, potter, sculptor, photographer, jewelry-maker, builder. I've been incredibly lucky that my family has always championed me as an artist. I know no other life. I meet with other artists of all abilities and work with different media and styles, but I especially love the development of my drip-paintings. Often, the end result of my work surprises and fascinates me.

I like it that people find it interesting to study each painting, to think about its creation, and to trace the lines of paint. This is artwork that actively involves the viewer, and when a viewer is invited to participate and enjoy, the art is more complete. The fascinating diversity of faces and the endless ways to portray them captivates and connects us all.

Photo by MaryLynn Gillaspie

http://bairdstudios.com/

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Photo by Lydia Bittner-Baird

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Andy Baird “The Value of Line”

Victor Reading Oil on Canvas

STORY

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http://bairdstudios.com/

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http://bairdstudios.com/

Andy Baird “The Value of Line”

http://bairdstudios.com/

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Andy Baird

“The Value of Line”

http://bairdstudios.com/

Malcom Genet, an art consultant in New Orleans, writes that “Andy Baird is the first artist to unite drip technique with portrait painting. In the art world, we call these post-Modern hybrids ‘original,’ in the sense that they make painting new again. Andy Baird stretches our imaginations by pairing two unlikely styles into clearly innovative works.”

The traditions that inform my work are explained by art consultant Michael J. Miller, who writes, in part: “Andrew Baird has created a new and original hybrid art form: the action-painted portrait. He combines the unlikely duo of portraiture, which thrives on likenesses and naturalness, with abstract expressionism, which tries to avoid likenesses and subjects from nature.

Such originality and invention by mavericks creates new areas of value in art. Baird is one such genius.

“Surrealist painters in 1920’s Paris were first to fling or drip paint, marveling at the ‘energy traces’ and lyrical beauty of ‘accidental art.’ In the 1940s, American painters expanded on Surrealist ideas and methods, eliminating anything recognizable from their art, creating the first American abstract expressionist works.

Jackson Pollock began non-traditional drip-painting, composed on the floor on an un-stretched canvas, radicalizing painting for the next half century or more.

“Andrew Baird is in the direct line of the abstract-expressionists, but one who reverses the order again, by using this American avant-garde technique to paint specific figures.

“Another impetus for abstract expressionists was molecular/atomic physics. Pop culture emerged around ‘atomic theory’, and Pollock’s flinging paint was splattering lines of energy that reflected the orbits of electrons around nuclei, which in turn echoed that of the planets orbiting around the stars; this theme was often expressed by the progressive artists of the day.

“When Andrew Baird, one of the brightest contemporary artists working in portraiture today, uses his abstract-expressionist technique to compose the most beautiful female faces, he reminds us that even the prettiest face is a secret, minute world of whirling particles, brought together in aesthetic perfection by Great Mother Nature, and enhanced by the interpretation of a uniquely talented artist.”

With input from and thanks to Malcom Genet, New Orleans, and Michael J. Miller, San Francisco.

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Andy Baird

Right Page: Photo by MaryLynn Gillaspie

http://bairdstudios.com/

http://bairdstudios.com/

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