Sheri Bakes | The Company Of Stars

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Sheri Bakes, "Morning"

oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Gallery.

In her signature stippled, magical realism style with a continuing focus on nature, Sheri Bakes presents a collection of landscapes inspired by a dear friend’s experience hiking from California to BC.  Bakes captures the characteristic vegetation along this long route, depicting the changes in landscape, weather and atmosphere evident in the received photos taken along the journey northward.  Bakes’ ever-present indication of movement, breath and life-force - the unseen made visible - connects all her images, inviting quiet contemplation and offering momentary sanctuary from a busy and relentless world.

Sheri Bakes’ work stems from an interest in wind: the motion of the atmosphere. Her work pulls in and out of focus, from windswept, loosely rendered landscape to abstraction. Fine attention is given to light and its stippled effect, built up through many layers throughout a wide variety of landscapes and atmospheric moods. Bakes' work is intended to serve as respite and an aid to meditation, to shift through the days and grow with the viewer over time. 

Bakes lives with Aphantasia (internal blindness or no “mind’s eye”) and works solely from her own many photographs. 

Bakes received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1998, and began exhibiting with Bau-Xi Gallery in 2002. She lives and works on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Kevin Chong wrote for the Globe and Mail: "Her brooding wind-swept scenes highlight tensions not only between the sky and land, but also between the physical landscape and the world of the mind."

Bakes has exhibited in Europe, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Toronto and Vancouver. Her work has been placed in numerous private collections across North America and Europe, and in permanent collections with Emaar Properties, Dubai, UAE, Enunciate Conferencing, Toronto Dominion Bank, UBC Psychiatric Hospital, Vancouver General Hospital, St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, BC. and Swedish Hospital in Seattle. 

Artist statement:

This recent body of work is inspired by a friend’s six-month solo thru-hike along the Pacific Crest Trail and the photos she shared with friends and family along the way. 

Jennifer Szabo entered the Pacific Crest Trail on April 8, 2022, at Mile 0 in Campo, California, and by the time this show opens, she will have finished in Manning Park in BC, sometime in September. 

The Pacific Crest Trail is approximately 2,650 miles and is listed as one of the top five most challenging thru-hikes in the world. Wildfires prevented Jennifer from hiking two sections of the trail, approximately 362.6 miles. 

Building this show was challenging and also gratifying from the start of the process to the finish. It provided a way for me to accompany my friend on her journey from the studio, and to accompany her mom (who is also a good friend) on her own journey of emotions while her daughter was out on the trail, while simultaneously experiencing my own paint-focused journey through the work.

This show is in celebration of my friend Jennifer, her incredible accomplishment in solo thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and also in celebration of her wonderful, very dedicated and supportive family, Peter, Nancy and Emily. 

-Sheri Bakes 2022