Artistic inspiration often comes from strange places, and it often comes quite unexpected. On Friday night a few months back, we were at this pizza joint, and I was enjoying my second piece of pizza when a woman walked through the restaurant with the most fantastic plaid dress on I had ever seen. When I got home, I tried to envision the pattern, then I sat down with my iPad and painted this piece.
A few years ago, a friend of mine who never drinks coffee drank a 6 shot caramel macchiato, then got on the Lightrail. At the second stop, a girl with indigo hair got on and sat across from him. He was mesmerized by her hair and fell into an existential trance. Over the course of the next 5 minutes, he proceeded to deconstruct his entire existence based on what the color in her hair evoked in him. I feel a little bit like that every time I see a girl with indigo hair. Girls, you know the color, I think it’s called Electric Blue.
I have received permission from my friend to post the piece of prose he wrote 2 hours after the experience. I have posted it below.
Solitary shade covered us both, so closely you stopped… so strangely comfortable. You stand awkward from your style. I looked away to avoid an attachment that I knew was already there. An unnaturally natural purple that fits you so well keeps itself parted on your forehead and rounded features. Moving downward reveals an eye-stopping sight. Past your dark eyes a nose stud makes me tremble for a taste of your lips. I’ve been built up for you so you could be perfect in my perception. The white nape of your neck makes my breathing feel tighter, constricted. A soft grey cotton shirt holds a logo I can’t bring myself to look at for fear of being noticed, and fear of my own imagination. Below your bag I see the pattern of my heart and soul; red and white tiled with ribboned black flows around your skirt like a halo around my lustful desire. The mid-section exposure of half of a thigh tattoo leads my eyes back up, and under where they just were. Socks pulled high and tight on your ankles give the estranged nerd in me an instant feeling of connection; and they are covered in stars that I could gaze at all night. Your petit stature is performing as the innocence I seek when I see your punk heels that match your plaid patterned skirt. I have to analyze the individual details to keep sanity. Had you stood but a little farther away, the beauty of your full figure would have unconsciously stopped my breathing. Had you been but a little bit closer the immense detail of your features would have done the same. Now that I am faced with you across a distance, I can only see the frontal silhouette of your face. Your shoulder length hair has become a shape and shrine to my pining. Still when I follow you my glances are intermitted with the recoil of your entirety. I finally feel the lust I knew was coming when you show your insecurity by adjusting your skirt to come below the sun of your body… I close my eyes for a moment as the personal lust becomes so involving that I can’t comprehend my other senses. I want you. My arms feel weightless because of their desire to reach out and hold you. But am I enough for you? I walk in the gutter because I fear what I (in truth) desire. And I am left in your wake, at the break of this hour that comes after.
And again! I long for you when I ford through the churning black waters of every day. I have judged all but you; there is no comparison or scales with which you can judge an evanescent embodiment of awe. I have to stop now; you are still too present for my senses to function again. I hope you fade with distance and not through a fog of hope and a sea of tranquility. Please, help me recover from the dominance of the world in my life. Please… sketch my new world above and beneath me. Goodbye.
Now that you’re gone I feel drunken with strangeness. My chemical imbalance has been underlined by your absence. My movements are awkward and my thoughts are unrefined, indefinite, in low frequencies… I’m dreaming. I have adapted an obsession with this writing but I know it must end. And I want it to, but I can’t stop. The page is calling out to me, “you know you want to, you think you need to”. And no one can ever leave me alone. I’m crowded by their interruptions and awkward re-introductions. They blame me for everything and they are so defensive. They yell and push and cuss, and I repent and am beaten for them; I torture myself. And now I’ve digressed into the sketch of myself; a wiry paper-maché soul that doesn’t hold water or any life. I forget my thoughts and I’ve forgotten my way. Will this ever end… this drifting? I feel like exhaling and letting my body sink beneath the tension and coolness of the water’s surface. And I see nothing on the horizon, no sight of salvation from this my indifference. Just a gone away god. Leave me alone; I can’t feel the wind anymore. I float no longer.
-Anonymous
I’ve made a lot of art. But this piece has consistently been one of my favorites of all time.
The photograph was taken on Easter Sunday of the year 2005. The place is Bainbridge Washington, a small island just off of Seattle. I was a senior in high school, and it was my spring break. When I got home from the trip, I went though my photos from the trip and picked out a few of my favorite. I mixed them together to create this image.
Ok. I’m gonna dig for a piece of my art. The first original I find will make it on this page.
I vaguely remember this one. I did it with an ipad app called Inspire. That was like years before the apple pencil, so I painted it with my finger. The device I made this one on was like a 2nd generation ipad, and you had to smudge the paints very slowly because the graphic engine in that app sucked before one of their major upgrades that happened after I painted this piece.
Every magician of any worth can do the magic disappearing act. Ask David Copperfield. He can fly. Hot girls can saw him in half. He can escape from a safe inside a building that’s about to be detonated. He can hurtle himself over Niagara Falls. He can make the Statue of Liberty disappear. This dude is the magician of magicians! I have no plans, and will make no attempt to make myself disappear. On the contrary, this is my magic re-appearing act. Many of you know me, but haven’t spoken with me in years. Others of you only know me from the myths I leave in the wake of every place I go. Others of you don’t know me at all, but if you experience anything I’ve created, you soon will.
I’ve made a lot of stuff. I’ve made so much stuff that I don’t even know where all the stuff I made is. Somewhere across a dozen hard drives, there lies the complete works of Baker. I’ve been digging long enough that i’ve found a lot of the good stuff, but there are things I remember creating that I can’t find for the life of me. Regardless, I’ve decided to publicly share at least some of the good stuff which has lied dormant in 0s and 1s since the day I created it who knows when… maybe 9 years ago?
Be it sound or image, I am an artist. Welcome to my world.