October 16, 2024
Rush Baker IV has been included in Maxwell Rabb's 10 Innovative Contemporary Landscape Painters for Artsy. Here, we highlight 10 contemporary artists whose practices are innovating landscape painting...
As the son of a Washington, D.C.–area politician and a delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Rush Baker IV wants his paintings to generate political discourse. In his exhibition at Hemphill Artworks in Washington, D.C., “Landscapes,” a selection of abstract works that use archival photographs and visual ephemerafrom the Civil War era comments on sociopolitical turmoil in the United States.
In this show, Baker takes the paper prints of historical landscapes and layers them with pigment, resin, and plaster. Untitled (Gettysburg Landscape) (2024) presents a portion of the Pennsylvania hillscapes where the Battle of Gettysburg took place, shrouded by encroaching charcoal-colored edges and frenetic splotches of yellow. Here, Baker expresses the historical significance of the battle while underscoring the dangers of society’s collective memory becoming obscured.
After graduating with a BFA from Cooper Union in 2009 and an MFA from Yale University in 2012, Baker began to think of his paintings as a way to generate discourse around policy. His work has been the subject of solo shows at Hemphill Artworks and Keijsers Koning in Dallas.
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