Forest for the trees
Date: 2011
Price: $500
Medium: painting
About the artist
Bio...Kate Baird is a painter. She received an MFA from the University of Chicago in 2005. Formerly a teaching artist at the Guggenheim Museum and the Kentler International Drawing Space, she now works on art education programs at the Moxie Cinema and with Placeworks, a rural arts initiative. She lives with her husband and daughter in Springfield, MO.
The ability to assess danger is one of the most basic human skills, but the ability to ignore danger is only slightly less significant. When threats are complex and abstract (climate change, political dysfunction) rather than immediate (the tiger about to pounce, the oncoming bus), an appropriate response can be hard to find. This group of paintings reflects my growing awareness that threats which appear to be elsewhere may actually be close at hand and the necessity of finding a way of thinking about that which doesn't lead to paralysis. The uptick of many kinds of instability in the world and being the parent of a young child cause me to consider safety/danger more frequently and intensely than I used to. These concerns superimpose themselves on the questions I have always explored in my paintings: What are the structures- natural, architectural, psychological- that place us in the world? How do I find my way?
