Originally from Cincinnati, JJ Baker spent 5 years in Houston as a high school art teacher and artist before pursuing his MFA through the Alfred-Düsseldorf Painting Program.

The artist says: “ My art is created to provoke thought and to question. The work never reveals an immediate answer, rather it invites the viewer to investigate and discover. The media and materials I work with allow me to explore deeper connections to my audience, my ideas, and myself. The primary focus is the human form, and I pull images from art history, film, and my surroundings. This synthesis of images represents the barrage of information we are subject to. Combining various drawing, painting, and collage techniques, I paint portraits to represent the perception of the self: how we perceive, how we are perceived, and how we want to be perceived.”