At times I leverage the application of oils and brushwork to a comical degree. Making images that hang on walls tends to tie the viewer to a history of painting, but my paintings have leaned heavily on the first-hand viewing experience. Older painters might laugh at this even being a notion, but I think younger artists understand what I mean. I have been working with a hybrid process of direct UV digital printing over the last ten years. This involves direct digital printing overtop of thin layers of oil paint and aerosols, with a majority of thick impasto application happening later in the process covering the digital print. 

In regards to recent subject matter, I’ve been sourcing some first and second-hand experiences of the effects of opioids on the community around me, I started really thinking about pleasure. Or, the fact that humans are constantly running from pain. The difference lies in the privilege and accessibility to escape that pain. This may express itself through drug abuse, escapism via technology, or any manner of ways to numb the throbbing nerve of existence. 

Historically speaking, this is still the best time to have ever lived (at least pre-COVID). I wanted to really confront painting’s time-honored approach to capitalizing on the ability of translating pain into pleasure via the experience of viewing an image rendered in paint, whatever it may be depicting. Instead of heading down the well-trodden path of gruesome or violent imagery, it seemed more fitting to imbue my socially/politically grotesque references with an acidic sense of color and pattern that might also transform these difficult subjects back into another commodity of pleasure. It hopefully folds these larger cultural criticisms (that are so central to being American, privileged, and white) back into the act of painting itself.

– Jimmy Baker excerpt from The Interview with Bart Keijsers Koning

Baker is an associate professor in the Studio Department at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He has exhibited work in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Basel, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, and other American cities. His work has been featured in many publications, private collections, as well as permanent collections at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Zabludowicz Art Trust London, Taschen Foundation Berlin, Cincinnati Art Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, JP Morgan Art Collection, and Progressive Insurance Collection.