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A native West Texan, Neil Baker was raised and educated in the Southwest. As a successful advertising artist, he specialized in furniture and home furnishings illustration for 35 years, with accounts from all parts of the United States. For the past thirty years he has devoted a great deal of time to watercolor landscapes of the Western States. As an ardent fly fisherman and hiker, he has traveled widely in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana and has an instinctive and first hand knowledge of his subject matter. His artwork is included in private collections around the country.

 

Basically a self taught painter, Baker has had no formal advanced art education, but has absorbed his interpretation of painting through the works and philosophies of artists such as Maynard Dixon, Gunnar Widforss, Wilson Hurley, and some of the early Taos artists. He was immersed in art at a very early age, using his first set of oils at age 11. His interest in art was perhaps passed down from his father, grandfather, and great grandfather whose livelihood was the creation of fine leaded stained glass windows. His work has shown successfully in galleries and museums.

 

Neil claims the environment as his inspiration and teacher. “I am a passionate admirer of Mother Nature and the treasures she bestows upon us…the beauty of the land, the waters, and the skies, manifested in both the most serene and the harshest conditions…the awesome power and the incredible patience she exhibits to complete the everlasting quest for her ultimate endeavor, the cycle of life. The earth and sky is an unlimited storehouse of ideas and inspiration for me…a patch of sunlight through a thick canopy of trees… the quiet solitude echoed in towering canyon walls…the ever changing pattern of light and color on reflective water…the unpredictable shape and texture of stone…blue skies, gray skies, crimson skies…all these things excite and inspire me.”

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