2023 Artist Statement

In a world literally and figuratively on fire, dominated by transactional relationships & consumption by sound bite, by a constant barrage of noise without signal, my practice is about a search for peace: for the underlying calm in the storm, for the sound between two waves of the sea, for the truth beneath the scattered exterior, the shapes of the mental and physical geographies of the world, of the faults in our perception of reality - that which we do not understand but feel inextricably drawn to, that which is the fullness and beauty that ultimately makes life precious and worth living.

We look around and see dis-integration everywhere - inequality, climate change-fueled natural disasters, political polarization, violence. These social and environmental problems are symptoms, not root causes. The underlying issue we ultimately face is our disconnection – from each other and from the systems of the planet. A fragmentation of the world. The root is within our perception and understanding of reality.

The Fragmentation and Flow series of paintings began with a simple framework: the deconstruction of painting down to its root components. It is an attempt to remove the technical, to strip it bare and reconstruct into something more fundamental that occurs in the art-making process and in the experience of the art viewer - connecting relationship into composition, toward a unified, interdependent, and complex system. In reconnecting fragments, mapping the system itself through layers of paint and pigment, through time embodied by drying cycles, I find pathways toward re-connection to universal truths, and perhaps also to drawing out what is real and repairing some of what is broken.

T.Baird, 09.2023