Oil on Canvas
2023
16 x 20 inches
Framed
 
Employing the techniques of the classical Dutch Baroque Vanitas paintings, Baker creates still-life work of flowers, fruit, vegetables and skulls that explore themes of death, transience and renewal. Her subjects symbolize aging, sickness and decay–the fleetingness of life. They are reverently and sumptuously painted in lush, vibrant colors-their beauty ignorant of their impermanence. 
The Dutch Vanitas paintings emerged in 17th century Europe at the beginning of free-market capitalism. They sought to caution the worship of wealth over morality and remind the viewer of the certainty of death and futility of material pursuit. Today, Baker reintroduces us to these allegorical paintings in a very different time of human history. The Baroque themes are enduring, yet the paintings take on an additional meaning in a time where truth, values and liberty are also fleeting and impermanent-and just as fragile and vulnerable as the physical body. There is a new relevance to these paintings, marked by late stage capitalism -a social experiment in its old age, its best years gone- as if we are living in its last gasp. 
 
Jordan Nobuko Baker is an artist living and working in the Hudson Valley, New York. She attended Tufts University, received a BFA in Art History from Syracuse University and an MFA in mixed media from SUNY Albany. Baker added oil painting to her art practice in 2018 and has a focus on still life painting inspired by the intricacies of nature and earthly cycles.