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An Environment of Her Own
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2016/09 - September
Kristina Rose Baker, The Bascom’s Community Artist-in-Residence, will be spending a year painting, creating sculptural and performance pieces, teaching children’s art, and acting as a teaching liaison between community organizations and The Bascom.
A graduate of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, she left the neutrals of the Northeast for the vibrant hues of the Appalachians. Her large canvases inspired by nature’s colors, textures, shapes, and patterns are almost an environment unto themselves, dimensionally enhanced with sculptural layers of paint that is sometimes imbued with wax, chalk, or soil.
Her love of the earth and its trees, vines, flowers, herbs, and medicinal plants is reflected in her subject choices. There’s just enough representational imagery to tap into the familiar, yet her work teeters on the abstract, which creates tension and invites introspection.
Plants and flowers are an integral part of her identity and are reflected in her name –her grand-mother’s maiden name, Rose. There is a reverence in her voice when she speaks of her grandmother, who was also a painter and served as a role model.
Mixing natural materials into paintings invites surprise.
“I like the idea that natural paintings alter over time, having a life of their own,” she says. “I don’t make things archival because I am interested in how things will change.”
Change is an underlying theme in her pieces. She is inspired by cyclical transformations. Her website is organized in a life-death-rebirth (summer-winter-spring) form.
The Bascom has been a refuge, a resource, an inspiration, an incubator of new ideas, and a calling to teach.
“I love it here at the Bascom,” Baker says. “I’m really happy. It’s made me realize I want to pursue teaching as a career. Teaching is just as inspiring as creating.”
Contact Kristina Rose through thebascom.org, her email, [email protected] or her website kristinarosebaker.com to learn more about her process and her work.
