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Anna P. Baker (12 June 1928 – 28 February 1985) was a Canadian visual artist. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, she was adopted by Alfred Burrows Baker and Mabel Roberta Pearl Baker. She entered the University of Western Ontario where she was elected to the Art Students League, A.I.C., and Delta Phi Delta, National Art Fraternity, and graduated in 1950. She received a BFA and a MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954, and went on to teach art at Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio for three years. She exhibited frequently in her home town of London, Ontario, and for many years at the 57th St. Art Fair in Chicago, and in many cities from Los Angeles to New York. In 1956 she won the top painting award in the Chicago Art Institute's 59th Chicago and Vicinity art annual for ''High Fequency Ping''. Anna remained a Canadian citizen but for the last twenty nine years of her life, she lived in the village of Barton, Vermont where she opted to bow out of the world of dealers and galleries so she could work in her own way on her own terms. On 28 February 1985, Anna died in Kingston, Ontario from cancer. Anna integrated her eclectic interests into the subject matter of her paintings – * Theatre : The Ambrose Small Series (The ghost of Ambrose supposedly haunts the Grand Theatre in London). * Art : The Rosa Bonheur Series * History: Before Salisbury, Laura Secord and Her Cow, The Trojan Horse, Queen Victoria Reviewing the Troops with the Duke of Wellington After Landseer, Two Phoenicians * Literature: Don Quixote, The Cranford Series, Shakespearean Series, Reluctance (Robert Frost). * Biology: Numerous owl paintings, The Cornish Cat, Three Grouse, The Great Lobster Catch, Bird, Owl and a Very Fat Dog, Baboon, Butterflies and Moths. * Memories of her childhood: Tennis – 1910, Baseball Game -1910, Elmwood Bowling Green, Orangeman’s Parade, With Mutes and Plumes, The Garden Party, The Victoria Jane. Anna obtained many awards including the Frank G Logan prize at the Chicago and Vicinity Exhibition in 1956 for “High Frequency Ping” and from the New England Press, Best Illustration, Daily, Class 1, First Place, The Sunday Times Argus. == Comments from critics == “Anna Baker works magnificently in many media. Her pictures reveal the true mark of genius – an originality and technical excellence that offer her viewers a glimpse into a personal world of her own devising." Laurence Lariar, New York Art Dealer, 1967. Anna’s “Unique sense of humour and incredible capacity for painstaking detail makes her work inimitable. Like all good art, Ms. Baker’s compositions are basically abstract, but the images that she develops often are quizzical , evoked in dots, dashes, and color shapes that leave no area without interest.” “To own an Anna Baker drawing/painting is to be on daily contact with a blithe spirit who is also one of our most accomplished artists”. Harold Hayden, art critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, 1979. “Fanciful geometric wisps, suggesting the architecture of flowers and snow stars form the cellular structure of man and beast as created by artist Anna Baker. Thus the detailing of these fine examples of decorative art is as complex as watchworks, as equisite as doilies. The method, rendered with ink, as well as watercolors and oil paints, becomes a tour de force, and the compositions are as stylized as stage sets for an allegory." Beverly E. Johnson, Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, February 4, 1968. When the Chronicle in 1974 began publishing in Barton, Vermont, Anna “began illustrating its humour column. Her first illustration showed the artist seated on a Holstein cow....She began to submit cartoons featuring two wall-eyed Holsteins who regularly observe the triumphs and follies of the Northeast Kingdom” (NE Vermont). Tom Slayton, Sunday Times Argus, Sept.4, 1983. "Anna P. Baker, former Chicagoan creates a marvelous storybook world of her own in her infinitely detailed, intricate paintings and drawings. Her work can be seen here only at the Little Gallery, 1328 E. 57th St. which is directed by Mary Louise Womer and Mrs. Carl Schniewind, widow of the late director of the Art institute’s prints and drawings department. Visitors flock to see a Baker show, and to see the superb ceramics of Otto and Gertrude Natzler of California.....Miss Baker's collection is called "Chiefly Cornish" having been done during a year’s visit to Cornwall, England. The 35 pictures are filled with the high quality and the charm of her work. Her pen often reveals her lively wit as well as her originality and her imagination". Edith Weigle, art critic for Chicago Sunday Tribune, November 19, 1961. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Anna P. Baker」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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