In a poised showing of artwork which is brighter and bolder than her typical objectives, Ms. Teresa Baker further renders an appropriate quiet relaxation with her forms and media choices with her opening at de boer Gallery. It is in this difficult balance of a personal extension of bold colors with the cerebral attunement the subject is gently lathered in, so originally with each artwork.

Unwritten, 2023
acrylic, yard and buckskin on artificial
turf
50 x 110 in.
127 x 279.4 cm
Courtesy of Teresa Baker and de boer Gallery. Copyright Teresa Baker.

And it is in the variety of scales which broaches the concept of “lathering” – the animation we receive is not a thunderous excitation as color can produce in ourselves; that yellow and its potential for erraticism is here made into a refined medley, for instance; as a means of action which seeks peace not drama.

Yellow Prairie Grass, 2023
acrylic, yarn and buckskin on artificial
turf
38 x 75 in.
96.52 x 190.5 cm. Courtesy of Teresa Baker and de boer Gallery. Copyright Teresa Baker.

And how peaceful each of these pieces are; there is an appreciation of the fabric choices which play with the formed surfaces of color, as well as the novel forms of texture brought out of her consideration of brush strokes; towards that fulfillment, that sense of completeness which is distinct with each artwork. For example, Yellow Prairie Grass has a momentous – yet again not loudly anxious – completion of the colors in a way which is willfully uncanny. It is not a “smearing” of paint; it is a healthy blending representing the possibility of smoothness in wildflower form. Contrast this with the deep sea blue in Paragraph of Trees; that darkness which with its own saturation brings out not melancholy but a pensive meditation towards an act of passivity. Is that the goal of returning to Nature? That it is a way of relaxing, a means of achieving equilibrium; of peace?

Paragraph of Trees, 2023
buckskin and yarn on artificial turf
105 x 43 in.
266.7 x 109.22 cm. Courtesy of Teresa Baker and de boer Gallery. Copyright Teresa Baker.

So there is then a confidence which accomplishes brightness without power. Resonance without an amplification; A suppression – yet in such a decadent world which Western Societies are bathed in, with the constant ability to seek more and more, is this not a healthy effort? Is not the mode of experiencing beauty the desire to remain present forever? Why does one need more if one already is?

Come now, I will tell thee – and do thou hearken to my
saying and carry it away – the only two ways of search that
can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is
impossible for anything not to be, is the way of conviction,

for truth is its companion.. The other, namely, that It is not,
and that something must needs not be, – that, I tell thee, is a
wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is
not – that is impossible – nor utter it;

Poem of Parminedes II. 1-6

Thus the affirmation of Ms. Baker’s indigenous roots has nobility in its motivation to return us to simplicity. Her choice of media is a compelling one; in encouraging the promotion of synthetic materials birthed out of industrial pangs towards resembling Indigenous tapestries; each with its own distinct shape. It is to move past the commodity and appreciate the light that is formed out of applying such acrylic paints to its surface, mollifying its brightness, towards creating greater inner peace in the mind of the subject. This is Fine Art.