Adrian Baker — Upping the Ante with an Extraordinary Hand

Adrian Baker — Upping the Ante with an Extraordinary Hand - theHumm August 2019

By Sally Hansen

Art… and Soul

In June, 2005, the title of our featured artist article was “Adrian Baker — Putting the Extra in the Ordinary.” At that time her Artist’s Statement was “My intention is to enable the observer to see beyond the familiar and witness the extraordinary in the ordinary.” She has succeeded admirably.

Since then she has upped the ante. Today she paints because “Art is my protest sign.” Maturity suits her. Her current work is an exploration of humanity’s interdependent relationship with the environment. On her website adrianbakerart.com , she says that she “... is endeavoring to initiate reflection & dialogue on society’s disconnect with nature, and our collective inertia at the prospect of environmental decline.” It is a timely and compelling choice, as expressed in this quote by controversial performance artist Marina Abramovic: “The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.” She forgot to add, “...and save the planet.”

With no need to resort to the sensationalism of much conceptual art, Baker is serving up a much more accessible and powerful message. She is preparing for a solo show opening on September 26 at The Annexe Gallery (part of the Ottawa Art Gallery) titled Watershed. When I visited her home studio in Appleton a few weeks ago she was at work on a huge, stunning statement about our interdependency with nature — a surreal image of near-life-sized, fully-dressed humans struggling underwater to comprehend and survive. It is a beautifully disturbing image that inescapably evokes a visceral response at a time when millions of people are being forced to acknowledge the consequences of our rapacious impact on our environment.

Her canvas is a testament to all of the talent, skill, hard work and experience she has invested since she emerged on the art scene in 1980. It has long been obvious that she is an exceptionally gifted artist. Her works have appeared on publications such as The Reader’s Digest and the Canadian Medical Association Journal; back in 1984 she was commissioned to paint a portrait of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his three sons as a retirement gift. She has completed innumerable portraits of people and pets. In 2009 Baker was the artist-in-residence at Bermuda Masterworks Museum. Since 2013 she has completed several striking public art installations in Ottawa, commissioned by Heritage Canada and NCC — check them out on her website.

“Art is My Protest Sign”

Today it is not enough for her to paint more pictures that people would love and buy. She explains: “I realized that I wasn’t adding anything new to the oeuvre, and I felt I had to express my concern about the environment.” She believes that much of what ails society today is the result of people being out of touch with nature. Since she was a little girl living on a farm in Huntingdon in the Eastern Townships, nature has been her constant companion and sustenance. She and her husband, Robert Cretien, moved to Appleton in 1981, and they have created an oasis of natural beauty that constantly nourishes her and inspires her art.

Throughout her career Baker has consciously fought the temptation to succumb to the lure of commercial success at the expense of using her art as her “voice.” Even as a self-thwarted artist who elected to put her career on the back burner while raising her young children, she created a striking body of work exploring the vulnerability and exposure of women in our society (long before #metoo). One of her images of midwife-assisted birthing went viral in Australia and New Zealand, and she remains an eco-feminist. Many of her earlier pieces feature female nudes as she explores women’s special interconnectedness with nature. Painting from photographs she takes of live models, she is very protective of her models, and conceals their identities. “It’s not about faces; it’s the opposite of “the male gaze” (the female visually positioned as an object of heterosexual male desire) — this is a woman’s point of view.”

Upping the Ante

At an age when most are tempted to rest on their laurels, Adrian Baker is instead embracing new challenges. In 2011 she and her husband spent four months working as volunteer interns for Child Haven in India childhaven.ca . In 2017 they spent a month backpacking in Ecuador in support of their son’s not-for-profit initiative — Simon Cretien is the founder and executive director of Community Ascent Network communityascent.com . The objective of the project is to assist the remote indigenous community of Piñan in Northern Ecuador to create access for their youth to Ecuador’s public secondary education system. Adventure seems to run in the family; in her twenties Adrian left her job as Asst. Director of the Harbourfront Corporation in Toronto to realize her lifelong ambition of cycling across Canada.

And now she has upped the ante again. She decided recently to push herself out of her comfort zone. She is the only working artist in a class of twelve women pursuing their Masters of Fine Art Degrees at Emily Carr University in Vancouver. Baker is pursuing the program in order to “better articulate both visually and verbally, my concern for the environment.” The 2½-year program consists of Skype classes and critiques, three on-campus terms, a fifty-page thesis and a final exhibition, and is hard work. She feels there is a definite advantage in being a mature student; she is secure in her abilities and excited to be learning and exposed to new ideas.

Baker’s only regret is that she has had to curtail some of her teaching activities in order to meet course obligations. She began teaching 35 years ago, and values not just the enthusiasm of her students but the fact that it “keeps me on my toes and keeps me doing research.” When I admired an absolutely striking landscape casually leaned against the wall that looked as if it belonged in an exhibit of Group-of-Seven originals, she remarked that her students enjoy learning to paint in that style. Oh yes, she also joined Toastmasters two years ago in preparation for defending her thesis.

At the moment, the only way to see Adrian Baker’s art is through her website or by contacting her to visit her home studio in Appleton. Personally, I am looking forward to attending her one-woman show at The Annexe Gallery (Ottawa Art Gallery) opening on Thursday, September 26. And I’ll stop in and see Juan Geuer’s Luminous Precision Carbon + Light exhibit two floors up at the same time. The works of both artists strive to strengthen the connection between human consciousness and the natural world.

In January, 2006, I wrote that “Geuer’s goal is to seduce you into marveling at nature, and more importantly, into contemplating what you don’t know.” In 2019, Baker is warning us how much the ante has been upped in the past thirteen years.