Anna P. Baker - Comments From Critics

Comments From Critics

“Anna Baker works magnificently in many media. Her pictures reveal the true mark of genius – an originality and technical excellence that offer her viewers a glimpse into a personal world of her own devising." Laurence Lariar, New York Art Dealer, 1967.

Anna’s “Unique sense of humour and incredible capacity for painstaking detail makes her work inimitable. Like all good art, Ms. Baker’s compositions are basically abstract, but the images that she develops often are quizzical, evoked in dots, dashes, and color shapes that leave no area without interest.” “To own an Anna Baker drawing/painting is to be on daily contact with a blithe spirit who is also one of our most accomplished artists”. Harold Hayden, art critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, 1979.

“Fanciful geometric wisps, suggesting the architecture of flowers and snow stars form the cellular structure of man and beast as created by artist Anna Baker. Thus the detailing of these fine examples of decorative art is as complex as watchworks, as equisite as doilies. The method, rendered with ink, as well as watercolors and oil paints, becomes a tour de force, and the compositions are as stylized as stage sets for an allegory." Beverly E. Johnson, Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, February 4, 1968.

When the Chronicle in 1974 began publishing in Barton, Vermont, Anna “began illustrating its humour column. Her first illustration showed the artist seated on a Holstein cow....She began to submit cartoons featuring two wall-eyed Holsteins who regularly observe the triumphs and follies of the Northeast Kingdom” (NE Vermont). Tom Slayton, Sunday Times Argus, Sept.4, 1983.

"Anna P. Baker, former Chicagoan creates a marvelous storybook world of her own in her infinitely detailed, intricate paintings and drawings. Her work can be seen here only at the Little Gallery, 1328 E. 57th St. which is directed by Mary Louise Womer and Mrs. Carl Schniewind, widow of the late director of the Art institute’s prints and drawings department. Visitors flock to see a Baker show, and to see the superb ceramics of Otto and Gertrude Natzler of California.....Miss Baker's collection is called "Chiefly Cornish" having been done during a year’s visit to Cornwall, England. The 35 pictures are filled with the high quality and the charm of her work. Her pen often reveals her lively wit as well as her originality and her imagination". Edith Weigle, art critic for Chicago Sunday Tribune, November 19, 1961.