Bonnie Baker

artist statement

Drawing has always been the heart of my art making. In 2008, after working within the textile medium for 20 years, I re-engaged with drawing on paper and began exploring painting for the first time.  The observational drawings I make of everyday minutia, construct an armature of my formal work. I build up thin layers of colour then scrape and erase to describe marks. As these marks accumulate, they also reveal the history and construction of the form. Recently, I have been investigating how physical space and scale alters our understanding of the form.

Although, my process is largely intuitive, raw emotional experience is inevitably filtered by my conscious ideas. The process shapes and alters what I intended, until the piece, in a way, makes itself, becomes its own.   Brian O’Doherty, conceptual artist in his persona Patrick Ireland once stated “I draw to see what I am thinking.”

selected biography

Born in Ontario, Bonnie Baker moved to Nova Scotia in the 1970’s.  For 20 years, she was a media arts administrator.  She studied printmaking at NSCAD, before turning to a practice involving textile and drawing . She now lives in Annapolis Royal and is involved in regional art making and exhibition.  Her textile works have been exhibited nationally and have been collected by the Art bank of Nova Scotia, Royal Bank and Societe internationale des enterprises ECONOMUSSE.