heather joi

Heather Joi Baker is a self-taught oil painter from West Virginia now living in Baltimore, Md.

She considers herself to be a surreal abstract expressionist, a visionary artist.
She has a deep interest in astro/quantum physics and Christian mysticism because, as a child, through play with nature, she discovered a similarity in the patterns that exist both in the micro and the macrocosm.

She says, "I have to paint in order to see the parallel dimensions of fantastic reality. The tools that I have to communicate these ideas and their implications are symbolic and dynamic use of line (strings), form, color and gesture. When I set out to paint or create a design, I empty myself, in a search for an answer to a question that I do not even understand. It is a hallucinogenic cloud gazing experience where I feel that all I have are tools and the idea is passing through me like a conduit."

For her, the meaning of her paintings often comes long after the act of painting. "When I think I understand what is happening, I end up projecting my idea instead of allowing the original concept to form itself; the painting becomes stiff and convoluted."

As with nature, the organic process is always compositionally and mathematically correct, so she strives to allow the intuitive flow of energy dictate the next move. Her painting comes from either spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation that usually employs a combination of traditional and experimental techniques or from concepts that take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.

She aspires to convey the paradoxically unifying concepts in spirituality, art and science that can be understood through the transformational and cyclical processes found through the pattern that connects them together.