Tripp Baird
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In a world literally and figuratively on fire, dominated by transactional relationships &
consumption by sound bite, by a constant barrage of noise without signal, my practice is about a
search for peace: for the underlying calm in the storm, for the sound between two waves of the
sea, for the truth beneath the scattered exterior, the shapes of the mental and physical
geographies of the world, of the faults in our perception of reality - that which we do not
understand but feel inextricably drawn to, that which is the fullness and beauty that ultimately
makes life precious and worth living.
We look around and see disintegration everywhere - inequality, climate change-fueled natural
disasters, political polarization, violence. These social and environmental problems are
symptoms, not root causes. The underlying issue we ultimately face is our disconnection – from
each other and from the systems of the planet. A fragmentation of the world. The root is within
our perception and understanding of reality.
The Fragmentation and Flow series of paintings began with a simple framework: the
deconstruction of painting down to its root components. It is an attempt to remove the technical,
to strip it bare and reconstruct into something more fundamental that occurs in the art-making
process and in the experience of the art viewer- connecting relationship into composition,
toward a unified, interdependent, and complex system. In reconnecting fragments, mapping the
system itself through layers of paint and pigment, through time embodied by drying cycles, I find
pathways toward reconnection to universal truths, and perhaps also to drawing out what is real
and repairing some of what is broken.
