Bio
David Baird is an oil painter and draftsman focused primarily on contemporary figurative painting. He has taught classes in Australia, Europe, and the United States, and has been a visiting faculty member at Studio Escalier in Paris since 2016.
Baird has traveled and studied widely, attending the Ryder Studio (Santa Fe, NM), the Art Students League (NYC), Studio Escalier (Paris), and the Jerusalem Studio School in Israel, where he was awarded the Avigdor Arikha Masterclass Scholarship in 2019 to continue his studies in Italy.
Baird currently lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama.
Statement
“In a drawing, uncovered areas of paper are not necessarily seen as empty or lacking, but in a painting, areas of bare canvas are more likely experienced as an incompletion or absence. This can complicate matters of design and composition, raising questions about what constitutes a finished work and, most importantly, what is essential to a motif. The question of motif expands to include the treatment of the form and the handling of the medium itself. In many ways, the motif is actually determined by the medium.
From this perspective, every work creates countless questions with different solutions each time.
In the case of these two studies, my intention was to better understand how drawing and painting are related, and to what degree a work may be regarded as complete without necessarily being finished.”
