Hilary Baker

Statement

My current project is titled Predators. I am juxtaposing Los Angeles’ urban wildlife with our city’s classic, historic and rapidly disappearing landmarks, those that exist only in memory and the ones that remain. Rats, raccoons, foxes, snakes, feral cats, deer, and owls, among others, are posed against City Hall and Herald Examiner edifices, Bunker Hill, the Ambassador Hotel, Griffith Observatory and the Sanderson’s Hosiery building, water towers, gas works, and the oil fields of Signal Hill. Unlike a prized menagerie displayed in a big game trophy room, these creatures comprise a rogue’s gallery, both alluring and menacing. The animals are painted with matte, flat, highly saturated acrylic, and in order to create dimensionality I employ a wood grain effect to give the impression of material and texture. I present them face on, or glancing at us obliquely - but always unflinchingly, with unblinking clarity. Without the overlay of kitsch or sentimentality, the Predators engage the viewer with attitudes ranging from the coy and the wary to the mischievous.

Biography

Hilary Baker lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at the Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany, the University of La Verne, the American Institute of Architects, Loyola Marymount University, POST gallery, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, San Diego, and The Institut Franco-Americain, Rennes, France. She has been a Fellow at Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony, and an artist-in-residence at the Pont-Aven School of Art in France, ART/OMI, NY and the Ucross Foundation, WY. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Artweek, and New American Paintings. Baker’s work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Temple University, the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, the Crocker Museum, Chapman University and Kauffman and Broad.