Carl Baird

They say that Carl Baird was born with a paintbrush in his hands. Over the years he has expanded his artistic endeavors to include paintings, drawings, music performances, and media art, incorporating popular themes such as sexuality, violence, and urbanity in his creations. Baird focuses on the idea of ‘public space’ and, more specifically, on spaces where anyone can do anything at a given moment: the non-privately-owned space, a space that is economically uninteresting.

His paintings often evoke pop and mass culture references, incorporating written and drawn symbols, to create a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined. By emphasizing aesthetics, Baird seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that exist solely to punctuate the human drama needed to clarify our very existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.

His work sometimes radiates cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness, married to the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. In search of new methods to ‘read the city’ Baird explores various overlapping themes and strategies. The unique and recurring subject matter can be recognized, such as the relationship with popular culture and media, working with provocation, and delving into the ‘process of expectation’.

Baird’s works often focus on our contact with architecture and basic living elements; space and landscape are examined and sometimes transposed on boards and materials reclaimed from the urban environment. Carl Baird currently lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As a member of the I.A.T.S.E., Baird has progressed to work in the film and television industries, working with some of the top artists, scenic painters, designers, and pre-production geniuses throughout the film industry. His work has appeared in feature films and television shows for Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox.

Baird studied construction engineering and architectural technology at Niagara College and pursued his studies in architecture and art history in Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, London, and Lucerne. He also studied classical figurative drawing at Niagara College in Welland, Ontario.

In 2011 Baird was awarded first place at an international figurative art competition in Vienna, Austria.