Biography

Arlene Baker was raised in New York City where she studied art at City College, completing her BA at the University of Minnesota and her MA and MFA at the University of Iowa, followed by post-graduate study in London.  She has taught art in colleges and universities in Detroit, London, and New York.  Her work, which has been exhibited in one-person and group shows nationally and internationally, has been awarded numerous prizes and is in corporate and university collections as well as collections of fellow artists and private collectors.  She usually lives in New York State but returns to London from time to time to work with the Barbican Arts Group, an artists’ collective

Artist’s Statement

Arlene Baker’s “Silk Spaces” series evolved from her earlier work, which explored subtle interplays of color, horizon, and space, in the context of large free-hanging paintings and gouache paintings on paper. Where the color field artist Morris Louis veiled his canvases with poured layers of paint, Arlene’s Silk Spaces paintings hide a painted surface under layers of diaphanous silk. These elements interact to create an evasive world of their own. All paintings are a uniform 8” and 20” size and shape and relate to each other as if in a family.

Email: bakerr@union.edu