Sheri Bakes: Empathy for the Earth

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Sheri Bakes, "Listen To The Earth," 2019

oil on canvas, 54" x 54"

Sheri Bakes: Empathy for the Earth

Opening Reception: Saturday September 14, 2-4 pm, Artist In Attendance

Contemporary Canadian painter Sheri Bakes centers her upcoming exhibition around the notion of consciously holding space for empathy, specifically for the landscape, the long-time subject matter of her practice. Bakes attempts  this in both the physical realm and the world of the mind through her continued exploration of atmospheric motion in nature and her meditations on the process of painting.

Surrounded by rolling grassy hills, the rich green and brown forested trails of Vancouver Island continue into Sheri Bakes’ studio, where the rhythmic pace and internalized light of her outdoor meditations translate onto her canvasses. In the making of this latest series, the artist's brush becomes an extended hand as Bakes imbues the deliberate brushwork and layered transparencies of her compositions with a new sense of urgency.

Closely observing the wide variations in topography and vast open spaces around her, Bakes develops a keen awareness of its dryness in the absence of rain, noting the abundance of large fallen trees after a windstorm, their roots no longer able to keep them upright in the ground. Her romantic, windswept imagery, depicted in her distinct impressionistic style, takes on a profound spatial tension, one charged with the fraught vitality of an environment in distress.

Sheri Bakes is a contemporary Canadian painter whose work explores light and atmospheric motion (wind) in nature. She received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1998, and began exhibiting with the Bau-Xi Gallery in 2002. Sheri Bakes lives and works on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Bakes' 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. Sheri Bakes is represented by Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver and Toronto, and Foster/White Gallery in Seattle.