C. Tripp Baird
b.1979 in Boston, MA. Tripp has been producing and selling paintings and photography in some form for over three decades. He received a dual AB in Psychology and Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and completed a published thesis there on the interaction of memory with the experience of art. He has shown his work in exhibitions in Concord, NH; Cambridge, MA; Boulder, CO; San Francisco, CA; Montreal, Quebec; and New York, NY. After building two firms focused on supporting businesses that address social and environmental challenges while raising his two boys, he returned to studio work in 2019. He currently works out of Art Explosion Studios in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA where he is home with better half, Shana; sons, Cillian and Ewan; and pup, Yuki.

Solo Shows

2020 Still, San Francisco Zen Center, San Francisco, CA

2019 Select Works, The Mill, San Francisco, CA

2002 Flight, The Sert Gallery, Cambridge, MA

Group Shows

2023 The DeYoung Open, DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, CA

2023 Art Explosion Open Studio Exhibition, San Francisco, CA

2022 ArtSpan Open Studios, San Francisco, CA

2022 Art Explosion Open Studio Exhibition, San Francisco, CA

2021 Art Explosion Open Studio Exhibition, San Francisco, CA

2011 One Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA

2008 Gallery Gora, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2001 Easy, The Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA

1998 Crumpacker Gallery, Concord, NH

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In a world literally and figuratively on fire, dominated by transactional relationships & consumption by sound bite, by a constant barrage of noise without signal, my practice is about a search for peace: for the underlying calm in the storm, for the sound between two waves of the sea, for the truth beneath the scattered exterior, the shapes of the mental and physical geographies of the world, of the faults in our perception of reality - that which we do not understand but feel inextricably drawn to, that which is the fullness and beauty that ultimately makes life precious and worth living.

We look around and see dis-integration everywhere - inequality, climate change-fueled natural disasters, political polarization, violence. These social and environmental problems are symptoms, not root causes. The underlying issue we ultimately face is our disconnection – from each other and from the systems of the planet. A fragmentation of the world. The root is within our perception and understanding of reality.

The Fragmentation and Flow series of paintings began with a simple framework: the deconstruction of painting down to its root components. It is an attempt to remove the technical, to strip it bare and reconstruct into something more fundamental that occurs in the art-making process and in the experience of the art viewer - connecting relationship into composition, toward a unified, interdependent, and complex system. In reconnecting fragments, mapping the system itself through layers of paint and pigment, through time embodied by drying cycles, I find pathways toward re-connection to universal truths, and perhaps also to drawing out what is real and repairing some of what is broken.

T.Baird, 09.2023