For the Love of Landscapes: An Interview with David Baker
“There’s a magical place when painting the surface of the water,” David Baker says, “where [the surface] switches from mirror to window.” This magic trick was something he spent hours trying to capture during his early years at Ox-Bow. He’d venture out with a canoe on the lagoon, Baker donning a wide brimmed hat to shield himself from the sun and toting a set of paints. While the process might sound romantic, Baker emphasized it was pretty grueling work.
Baker first came to Ox-Bow in the 90’s and reminisced that in those days you could get a cold beer from the campus vending machine. At the time, he mostly rendered abstract oil paintings, the kinds of work that might draw Rothko to mind. All that began to change at Ox-Bow. As if inspired by the school’s founders, he suddenly found himself driven to landscapes, a style he’d previously written off as a “tired genre.”
Rivulet, David Baker, 2020, charcoal, 11 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
In the years beyond his first summer at Ox-Bow, Baker continued to expand his practice. He ventured into watercolor, motivated by a class he was to teach at South West Michigan College. Baker eventually brought his professorial skills to campus. He taught his first core course Watercolor in 2000 and continued to do so through 2008. In 2010, he switched gears and crafted his first Art on the Meadow Workshop. Since then, he’s taught community members everything from watercolor to charcoal.
This year, Baker looks forward to introducing students to some of his favorite subject material: the landscape of Ox-Bow, of course. Those taking Ox-Bow in Black and White can anticipate field studies of dunes and lagoons, while those in Painting with Oil Pastel can look forward to studying the arboreal ghosts and muses of Ox-Bow in the form of felled and still standing trees across campus. And all can count on spending time with an instructor who not only knows all the prime views, but will also teach you to capture them on canvas.
David Baker holds a painting under a tent in an Art on the Meadow workshop. Two students sit at a folding table behind him. Photo by Ian Solomon (Summer Fellow, 2023).
David Baker (he/him) is a visual artist who specializes in poetic landscape painting, much of it done en plein air. Baker is a lifelong artist and teacher who has taught at Ox-Bow School of Art since 2000. He is represented by Rising Phoenix Gallery in Michigan City.
This article was written by Shanley Poole and was initially published in the 2022 Experience Ox-Bow Catalog.