Note Type
Antony Hayton, Exhibit DirectorNote
Hezekiah Baker (1940-2007)
Old Man River
Oil on Masonite circa the late 1970s
Image size 12" X 24"
In 2001, Hezekiah Baker was interviewed by the New York Times for an early newspaper article on the Highwaymen. The description at the time was expansive, as the Highwaymen story was breaking, especially out of Florida. First of all, there was an attempt to pigeonhole the Highwaymen as either "Outside Artists" or "Folk Artists". They did fit both models; the issue was that both definitions could not fit a large (26) group of artists who had painted for 50, 60, and now 70 years and maybe produced 250,000 paintings. Suddenly, the story shifted to untried ground; there were no comparisons to those numbers anywhere at any time. We were talking about an Art Movement, but the "Art World" was not comfortable with the idea of untrained minority artists being the architects of an art movement.
Mr. Baker was acknowledged as one of the group's earliest members; some stories say he was the third member after Harold Newton and Roy McLendon. Alfred Hair convinced Baker to move from painting portraits and focus on landscapes. Thankfully, he listened. There are similarities in Hezekiah's artworks to Alfred Hair's, expansive scenes of a vividly colored virgin landscape that seems almost otherworldly, a land lost in time (that maybe only existed in the artist's imagination). Hezekiah's vibrant kaleidoscopic colors and liberal use of paint laid on by a palette knife enhance the depth and intensity of this work; as trees bend toward the river and birds take to the skies, in the distance, thick prismatic clouds fill the heavenly skies. It is a scene of an idyllic fantasy paradise filled with mystical tropical wonder.