It’s important for me to experiment with art - different surfaces and techniques. I paint mostly using oils, on canvas, linen and panels of wood or aluminum. My work is eclectic with everything from portraits and seascapes to figurative and abstracts… whatever is meaningful. For several years now I’ve been working with concepts of personal identity. How we interact with the world can be changed and our viewpoint expanded if we allow ourselves to think of things outside our bodies…as an extension of ourselves, be it another person, musical instrument or anything. I like using the subject of music to help us understand that an experience of deep meaning can alter one’s mood, sense of presence and even identity. I write the occasional blog that I hope you’ll enjoy. Find more of my work at: dennisbakerart.net

Instagram: @dennisbakerart

Email: dennis@dennisbakerart.net

Cell: 925-518-7917

My studio: 852 Old Oak Rd. Livermore

Call or email to schedule a visit.

Commissions: Considered

I try to make my artwork affordable and will often make reproductions on canvas or metal… available at a fraction of the cost. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll try work out a price you can afford.The majority of profit from sales is donated to charity.

I write occasionally about creativity and how important it is for each of us to have some sort of creative outlet… baking in the kitchen, working in the garden, making or repairing something in the workshop, restoring an old car or painting the next Mona Lisa. We are each happier when we create! If you wish to be notified when a new blog post is out sign up on my website with your email address. I promise to respect your privacy.

Identity and Music -- It's Fluid

From an earlier Blog at Dennisbakerart.net 11/3/2021

You will see me mention identity a lot on my website. A lot of my art is focused on the concept of what identity means. We tend to think it's straightforward and quite simple and one can certainly view it that way. But like many things, if you look a little deeper and then deeper still you start to see things in a different way, you start to see that there's a different appreciation for something when it's looked at from different perspectives.

I painted a piece recently titled, Trombone Solo. I continue to explore the concept that our identities are fluid. At any given time who we are is a reflection of our environment, to include both the people in our lives and our surroundings. Music is one of the best ways to understand this concept. When we are listening to music or performing it, we are engaged in an act of transmission and reception, something from one person to another that requires no spoken language. Music provides a pathway that communicates many simple things including emotion, energy and other concepts hard for us to understand. But we all can agree that music takes us places that brighten our day, improve our mood and basically transport us in many ways like nothing else can. The idea that something like music can change how we feel and even who we are.... typifies the concept that who we are at any given time changes. If you have followed my thinking this far then perhaps you can also see that it is a simple step to realize that others in our life can also transport us and us change our way of thinking…. and being at any time.

It is thinking and being in a certain way that create our identities, the things that hold our concepts of the world around us. I believe most serious musicians would agree they identify with their instruments in a very meaningful way that suggests it is a deep part of who they are. Take the next step and see that someone like a close friend is therefor part of one's identity. The book you are engrossed in, for a short time becomes part of your identity, if even superficially. This fluid environment in which we live changes throughout each of our days. If we can see this, come to the realization that something or someone we engage with becomes part of our identity then who we are… at a very deep level is wrapped up in all the people around us especially with those in which we engage meaningfully.

The last step… is to realize that other people and things around us are playing an important role in that act… of creating who we are in the moment. Part of you becomes part of me. If that sounds a bit strange just consider your relationship at the most fundamental level with the most important person in your life and reflect on the above thoughts.

I would love to hear what you think.

The Art of Creativity and Meeting the Moment We Are Given

December 18, 2021

From a Previous Blog Post on my website dennisbakerart.net — Feb 2021

This week I started watching the Netflix series, Nadiya Bakes. She began her first episode with the line,  “We all know that life can be tough but when I bake, somehow I feel better.” That resonated with me for some reason. The more I thought about it the more I thought about what ART is. And though it's not really important to define, it is important… to create… if you find it makes you happy. The act of sitting before a blank sheet of paper, empty canvas, lump of clay or piano keys… can be exhilarating, satisfying, inspiring, and even agonizing… but it makes being alive a calling, an invitation to draw from within… from places you don’t know exist and cannot begin to understand fully… let alone call upon at will. I hope this article is just the first to explore the Art of Creativity… those places that lie within us and the methods some folks use to access the unseen… and the very human act of making something… seemingly from nothing but truly from something wonderful… our hidden ability for responding to the world around us by drawing from the world within us. 

Let us begin in Germany…In the Winter of 1975, the virtuoso Jazz and Classical pianist, Keith Jarrett toured Europe and came to Köln Germany to play a solo concert, late in the evening, almost midnight. As one storyteller describes the moment, Jarret was not happy when he saw the piano he was to play later that night. The producer had failed to acquire the promised piano. Disaster begin to unfold… Jarrett was extremely disappointed as the concert had been scheduled to be recorded by his sound team. Already feeling badly, Jared had not slept well the last several nights due to chronic back pain and had just finished a painful 5 and 1/2 hour drive to reach Köln. He was a perfectionist, possessed perfect pitch and was appalled to see the piano in front of him, a baby grand that was terribly out of tune, used by the Opera for rehearsals. Even the sustain pedals were malfunctioning. 

Feeling like he did and facing the horrible instrument, he felt like calling it a night and cancelling. The concert’s young promoter, a woman of only 17, begged Jarrett to continue. Finally, Jarrett gave in and decided to play… and even make the recording after all… if only for themselves… to remember what it would be like to hear a concert performed with such a terrible piano. His sound technicians worked for hours to tune and repair the piano. The lower notes were a problem and the high notes even worse. To the untrained observer the sound was not so bad but to Jarrett’s fastidious ear it was a nightmare.

He went to dinner at an Italian restaurant and received horrible service. Starving, when the food finally arrived it was not to his liking…. and he was to play in less than an hour. He reached the theater and found his technicians completely set up and ready to record. He said to himself, “Well, I have to do this. I’m going to do this. I don’t care what the F’ing piano sounds like. I’m doing it.” 

As he played he needed to address each of the piano’s shortcomings, its off key notes and faulty pedals… there was no time to practice or complain, the audience was seated and expecting a great performance as befit his reputation. They knew nothing about the problems with the piano. What came next was the opening, a full 26 minute, completely improvisational work. Not a single note was written down or performed from sheet music. During the first few minutes Jarrett could sense the problems of pitch, poor timbre and tone… and he responded… to the piano…. working with the instrument before him…within himself… to create something. When there was noise in the distance… a set of bell tones for example, he responded… with similar tones and cadence. He absorbed the world around the theater… He sang some of the melodies as he played… he cried out occasionally and used the challenges with the instrument to play, “something different”, he said. Coming forth from the keys, the hammers and strings…. was an influence, revealed of jazz, gospel, classical, country and folk… that music writer, Charles Waring called, “the musical equivalent of stream of consciousness outpouring.” He did care what the piano sounded like and he met it… in that space. A relationship must develop between an artist and their work… their tools… be it ink, paint, hammer, string… and ultimately… the artist themselves.

The recording went on to become the best-selling solo album in jazz history and the best-selling piano album of all time. Sadly, Keith Jarrett suffered two crippling strokes in 2018 and is not expected to play the piano again with both hands.

When next you find the empty space before you… waiting for your response… think less of the fear of failure or of being an imposter… the road to creative expression is not beneath your feet but within the quite depths of your mind…and does not ask much from you…. only that you listen… and relate… to those spaces within.