Lydia Baker’s drawings and paintings depict surreal and symbolic dreamscapes where female protagonists explore time, memory, and desire.
Baker graduated with a BFA in Communication Arts & Design from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013 and with an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Arts in 2020. She has participated in numerous artist residencies, including the Women’s Artist Residency for Transcendental Awareness in Seneca Forest, WV (2013), The Artist Teaching Residency at The Grier School in Tyrone, PA (2019), the Saltonstall Foundation Residency Program in Ithaca, NY (2021), and the Vermont Studio
While Baker initially worked with oil paint as her primary medium, the pandemic shifted her studio practice and she spent 2020–2023 working exclusively in colored pencil to master her drawing technique. Her debut solo exhibition In Between (2022) with Massey Klein Gallery featured anthropomorphic landscape drawings populated by small-scale figures— narrated from a third person point of view. Baker’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Sonnet (2024), marks a turning point in the artist’s development. She has returned to oil paint several years after earning her MFA in the medium, and now creates her drawings with wax pastel and watercolor rather than colored pencil, allowing for a softer, blurred aesthetic. In addition to the medium expansion, Baker’s new paintings are narrated from a first-person point of view—two large celestial figures and their gestures—directly inspired by Baker’s life.