Lee Baldwin

Most of these works are placed in collections. Some noted as "available" await your buying pleasure.

Every artist has an "aha moment," which marks a turning in the arc of their career. For Baldwin, this was a cold summer morning in 1994:

"I was looking east into the sun rising over the Nevada desert as the sharply backlit masses of Michael Heizer's Complex One (Hiko, NV) cast broken shadows on the cold ground.

"Within those shapes I saw a backward projection of three-dimensional geometry onto a stretched, flat sky. After that time, my eye chose to resolve natural shapes as faceted, clearly-bounded patches of tone and color. I wanted to see the three-dimensional world clarified as a series of unique forms, flat shapes that could be cut out of paper, a logical abstraction of three-dimensional solids emerging from strong colors as though reaching forward from deep shadow into the light.

"Seven years later, I was looking at a photo of a rusting oil drum and was struck by the same sense of edgy geometric abstraction I'd seen that distant morning. The open lintel of Heizer's earthwork seemed to emerge from this photo until I blinked and looked again... it was just an ordinary photograph. But as I learned to find that relaxed state at will, the transformation reappeared. Finally, it became possible for me to realize on canvas the shattered images I had first imagined so long ago.

"This process today informs my approach to painting the Southwest landscape. Hard-Edge Impressionism... the next household word?"

Painting Gallery

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