Santa Fe artist Martha Rea Baker works in a variety of media including oil and cold wax, encaustic hot wax, and acrylic collage. She also enjoys printmaking, creating etchings and monotypes. Characteristic of Baker’s work is a textural surface, often enriched with incised or drawn lines, or rice paper collage. Gaining much of her inspiration from travels and study in Greece, Italy, Russia, France, Mexico and the American Southwest, Baker enjoys creating abstract designs inspired by the effects of time on our landscape and our civilization.

After receiving her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Martha Rea Baker continued her art studies in her native Texas, relocating to New Mexico in 2006. As a “signature member” of the Southwestern Watercolor Society and the Mississippi Watercolor Society, her highly collected paintings have been chosen for national and international invitational exhibitions. Her work has been published in Southwest Art Magazine, Watercolor Magazine, and the book, Splash V, the Best of Watercolor, the Glory of Color. In addition, Baker’s paintings have been selected for many private and corporate collections, including Wyndham and Hilton Hotels.

THE HILL COUNTRY PAINTINGS

This was Martha Rea Baker’s fifth year to attend the annual painting trip to the Texas Hill Country. She looks forward to beginning each new year with intensive studio time and creativity. On this year’s trip, Martha worked on large-scale canvases using heavy body and fluid acrylic paint to create landscape based abstracts. She enjoyed continuing her “Mesa Series” and “Canyon Walls Series” which have both proven popular in Santa Fe. Several of the completed abstracts are posted below: