Wildlife on the Edge: Hilary Baker

October 8, 2022 - March 6, 2023

Hilary Baker, Burrowing Owl, LAX, 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, Courtesy the Artist.

Hilary Baker, Parisian Room, 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, Courtesy the Artist.

The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature is pleased to announce its upcoming 2022 fall exhibition, Wildlife on the Edge: Hilary Baker, on view from October 8, 2022 - March 6, 2023. The public is invited to attend an opening reception on Sunday, October 9 from 3 – 5 p.m. at the Wildling Museum.

Wildlife on the Edge features new and recent acrylic paintings from Hilary Baker’s Predators series alongside a new series of animal portraits on birch wood. From a group of common pigeons to an elusive cougar, Baker’s subjects make themselves at home in urban locales inspired by Los Angeles landmarks past and present. 

Coupled with Baker's alternatingly bright and moody color palette, viewers are provided a fanciful peek into the secret lives of their wild neighbors, often hidden in plain view.

“I consider my Predators portraits and present them straightforwardly,” says Baker. “Their gaze is oblique, their confrontation with the viewer unflinching and their presence – like the past – uncompromising. It might be argued that these mostly nocturnal creatures serve as stand-ins for any city resident attempting to co-exist with a disappearing homeland.”

The exhibition also includes photography by Roy Dunn highlighting native wildlife in the urban landscape, providing local context for creatures who make the Central Coast home, and exploring California wildlife crossings such as the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing currently underway at Liberty Canyon. A resource table also offers visitors a chance for reflection with recent news on efforts to improve wildlife habitats and how the public can better coexist with animals in an increasingly modern landscape.

Questions? Contact info@wildlingmuseum.org or call (805) 686-8315.

Grateful thanks to exhibition sponsors Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians and donors to the Patti Jacquemain Exhibition Fund.

 
 

Related Programming

Sunday, November 6th, 3 - 4 p.m. | Gallery Talk & Book Signing with Hilary Baker

  • Join us for a special gallery walkthrough led by artist Hilary Baker. Learn more about the inspiration for her ongoing Predators series and hear firsthand stories behind the works on view, followed by a book signing of Baker’s recently published book Hilary Baker: Predators and Other L.A. Stories (2021).

Sunday, January 22nd, 4 - 5 p.m. | Roy Dunn: Capturing Imagery of Our Wild Neighbors

  • Join us for a very special gallery talk with featured wildlife photographer and cinematographer Roy Dunn. Dunn will provide a fascinating look behind camera trapping and ethical wildlife photography, and will discuss stories behind his photography on view as part of Wildlife on the Edge: Hilary Baker. 

  • $10 General Admission, $5.00 Wildling Museum Members - click here to register in advance.

About Hilary Baker

Hilary Baker, Courtesy Image

A Los Angeles native, Hilary Baker grew up among Hollywood's film and music industry professionals. She spent her childhood roaming the hills around her home in the canyons, hunting for animal bones and avoiding the occasional snake. Her subjects, ranging from baseball and wildlife to Los Angeles’ history and architecture, are depicted in her signature graphic style. Known for her dissonant palette, her paintings hint at anxiety and mordant wit with unblinking clarity. In her film short, Ecce Cat, she paid homage to the sinister undercurrents of mid-century animation. Baker’s world is quarried from the strange, poetic, and darkly humorous with the confidence of a painter who is in the game for the long run.

Baker received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her Master of Fine Arts from the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art & Design). She has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including The Skulptur Projekt Münster and the Institut Franco-Americain, and has been awarded residencies at the Pont-Aven School of Art, the Ucross Foundation, Art Omi, and the Yaddo and MacDowell art colonies. Her paintings have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Peripheral Vision, Art and Cake, Artillery, and New American Paintings. Her work is included in numerous public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the Crocker Art Museum, the Broad Art Foundation, Temple University, and the University of Southern California.

Baker's curatorial projects include organizing the exhibition Archaeology, and co-curating Sexy: Sensual Abstraction in California, 1950’s -1990’s, and Blind Courier: 9 Artists and Their Notions of Place. Her work can be seen at r d f a, Los Angeles. She lives in Ojai, California, with her husband, the writer Philip DiGiacomo, in the shadow of the Topatopa Mountains. 

Learn more about Hilary Baker and her work at www.hilarybaker.com and on Instagram at @hilarybakerstudio.

About Roy Dunn, Featured Wildlife Photographer & Cinematographer

Photographer Roy Dunn plans ahead for a mountain lion shot. © Roy Dunn.

The resulting mountain lion shot, captured using camera trapping (remote cameras triggered by sensors). © Roy Dunn.

Roy Dunn is well-known for his expertise in capturing incredible images of hummingbirds interacting in flight using high-speed flash techniques and equipment he personally developed, as well as his fine art Essence portraiture. More recently, Dunn has focused his efforts on Southern California mountain lion conservation. Using state-of-the-art camera traps, which he helped develop, he has captured images and high-definition footage of these apex predators in and around Los Angeles at night including the world-famous P-22. Dunn is an advocate for ethical wildlife photography, and his mountain lion footage has appeared in Apple TV’s landmark series Earth at Night in Color as well as the recently released America the Beautiful on Disney+/NatGeo.

Dunn is Australian, and following his electrical studies at university in Australia, he began his career in 1983 doing microchip design in London. He became a global technical marketing manager in Electronic Design Automation which took him and his wife to the U.S. in 1996. Since then, he has consulted in many areas: radio-frequency identification (RFID) for histology, high-speed photographic flash design, advanced technology application, and now consults solely with Hadland Imaging Inc. - solutions for all High-Speed Imaging requirements (from 20 up to 20 million frames per second)!

His lifelong passion for photography has seen him perform workshops and research projects for Canon and he has presented to numerous natural history and photography organizations. He also helps with the annual short course on High-Speed Imaging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He now shoots Sony cameras and Cognisys camera traps exclusively and regards himself as the luckiest guy alive.

Explore more of Roy Dunn’s work at www.humanstohummingbirds.com.

Past ExhibitRuben MislangHilary Baker, Urban Wilderness