BIOGRAPHY

Kristina Rose Baker is an artist, educator, and consultant working in Sonoma County, California. Alongside painting, she is a part of the core creative team establishing The Farm Studio (501c3), as well as a founding member of Open Fields Institute, currently under development. In 2021, she co-founded Crit Collective, an artist-run online critique group to inform, motivate, and enrich visual artists’ studio practices. She is the recipient of the Florence Lief Fellowship, Gamblin Paint Award, Anderson Ranch Brooks Fellowship, and is a Yale/Norfolk Fellowship Nominee. In 2017 she was awarded the year-long position of Community Artist in Residence at The Bascom Center for Visual Arts in Highlands, North Carolina. She has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications across the country and her resume includes extensive experience as Arts Educator, Museum Preparator & Educator; Art and Social Justice Research Consultant; and Art Advisory & Curatorial Assistant. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015.

ARTIST STATEMENT

THE TOMB OF THE DIVER

I. In order to surpass the limitations of the insurmountable self, the diver abandons all expectations of achievement, and thus fear, thrusting instead towards the outer edge of the mystery- committed to falling, though not necessarily in grace, as the depths of a collective consciousness come rushing forward; the diver begs to be swallowed up by the sweetness, dissolved into a crystalline lattice of connection and knowing without possession, attachment, or shame.

II. To encapsulate the commitment, to liberate the mind and the body from the influence of classical mechanics, to make time stand still: as our great celestial body hurtles through the void at 67,000 miles per hour, so the body pirouettes on its axis; the diver remains in perpetual motion, moving towards an unknown threshold that, once crossed, assures a state of alteration from which there is no return.

III. To paint is to be in a state of prayer; to dive is to trust that the water will enfold around a falling body; to leap is to believe that a net will appear, placed by some greater entity that rewards moxie and fortitude. The diver condenses like dew and is collected, the moisture of which is placed on the parched tongue of the postulant, who is anointed with the holiest of waters.

IV. Arriving by moral imperative at a very desperate solution, the diver shapes the horizon by removing the obstacles externally placed there. To remove oneself from the world is to claim another one in the process; given the forces of gravity, there is only one direction to go. Complete katabasis draws the diver down into the depths of the underworld; a forced exploration of what is to be found there.

(To be continued)