By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Dowagiac painter David Baker's working studio is a canoe.
His subject matter is water lilies, which he sees as "a spiritual symbol, a form of self-portrait and a beautiful flower."
Baker continues his artistic and spiritual sojourn in a new body of work, "Still Waters," from June 29-July 29 at Vesuvius Gallery near Glenn in Allegan County.
"Still Waters" features 15 oil paintings created "en plain air," or on location, a working method Baker has used for about seven years.
Last summer Baker spent three months painting the often overlooked beauty of Dowagiac Creek, which resulted in a geographic chronology of 24 watercolors.
When not in his canoe, the artist instructs two-dimensional art at Southwestern Michigan College in Dowagiac.
Baker continually challenges himself technically by capturing the surface of the water, shadows and reflections on the water's surface and beneath it.
In "Still Waters," Baker incorporated more landscape in each work and painted haiku poems on three of them.
From his artist's statement, Baker says, "Haiku poems record the essence of a keenly perceived moment in which Nature and human nature are linked."
"Yes, I wrote the haiku," he said Tuesday. "The goal of good haiku is to capture a keenly perceived moment that links nature with human nature.
"I took three paintings I had done in the canoe and tried to revisit the romantic and spiritual connection I had with the subject as I was painting it.
"I wrote the poems from that same inner place. Then I made a second variation on the three paintings.The haiku poems that accompany the paintings are subtly printed beneath or above the painted image. Like most haiku, these are not composed in the 17-syllable, 5-7-5 format we learned in school. For compositional reasons I wrote mine in two lines and limited each line to 18 letters. So, I made an already Spartan art form even more spare."
"I've only written poetry for family and friends. This is the first that I've let out into the world. It's a bit scary," Baker added.
"While these are in the spirit of the romantic quest of discovering all the creek crossings, the idea came from somewhere else," he explained. "I did a painting last summer at a workshop I took that incorporated a haiku. The teacher's (John Corbett) suggestion was to incorporate text into a painting. I think the lesson was inspired by paintings done by Chicago artist Phil Hanson, who did a series in which he used lines from Shakespearian sonnets as the imagery for paintings."
Visitors can meet Baker at the artist's reception for "Still Waters" this Saturday, June 30, from 7 to 10 p.m.
His reception features the culinary art of Christine Ferris.
"Still Waters" runs June 29-July 29 with summer gallery hours of Wednesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., and other times by appointment by calling (269) 227-3970
The gallery is also open daily Fourth of July week, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Vesuvius is located in an 1866 Greek Revival farmhouse between South Haven and Saugatuck at 1173 Blue Star Highway, one mile south of Glenn.
www.vesuviusgallery.com