Richard Baker: Twice Told Twains

The exhibition will include 18 gouache still life paintings of various books by Mark Twain. Of this body of work the artist has written:

"For twenty years or so I have been committed to the painting of still lifes. Many of my works from the previous ten years have commingled depictions of two-dimensional representations with diverse “rendering” of three-dimensional forms—into these hybrid conglomerations I introduced images of books in 2004. Books have always been important to me—from the first set of World Book Encyclopedia in my childhood home, through my first jobs in bookstores, to my readings in college and beyond. They always contained promise, optimism, and desire. They empower, ennoble, entertain. As physical objects they are powerful fetishes, icons, containers of every conceivable thought and/or emotion. We cart them from home to work on our commutes and they accompany us on vacations. We move them carefully packed in boxes from one domicile to another, from one phase of life to another. They come to stand for various episodes of our lives, for certain idealisms, follies of belief, moments of love. Along the way they accumulate our marks, our stains, our innocent abuses—they come to wear our experience of them on their covers and bindings like wrinkles on our own skin. As our personalities are changed (or not) by them, so too do they absorb impressions of our lives. Each book becomes its own unique individual, most especially true of the lowly paperback. As my involvement with this act of “portraiture” had continued, the reasons for choosing which titles and editions have evolved and become more various, though it remains of paramount importance that they be familiar and of no special pedigree. In the end, these paintings stand against loss, and for reverie, memory, optimism, desire, and love."

Richard Baker's paintings are represented in many distinguished private collections including those of Andre Gregory, Agnes Gund and Bruce Springsteen.