HAMLET - Like many careers, visual art is a heavily male-dominated industry. However, in Richmond County, Alexandria Baker is a competitive and award-winning artist.
Having won eight art awards and attending North Carolina’s Governor’s School West, Alexandria is an academically and artistically successful artist.
At the age of six, Baker won her first art competition for a local competition and continued to win awards at district and state level.
Baker’s art focuses on surrealistic ideas with highly detailed, symbolic imagery. She focuses on topics relating to adversity, religion, race, and exploration of self.
Many people like to attribute artistic skills to natural talent, but Baker didn’t become an artist overnight. As a child, Alexandria Baker suffered constant nightmares and bullying from her peers. It wasn’t until Baker saw the 2005 film, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D, that she began to explore visual arts. At first, Baker’s art seemed harmless; it was simply illegible childish scribbles.
But dedicating herself to her craft for an entire decade allowed advanced progression in Baker’s work, though still met with skepticism. Baker received critique for her shameless depiction of gore or nudity from peers, or judgment from her church for her fantasy-based imagery. As an artist of color Baker was criticized for not depicting people of her own race in her work when she was a beginning artist, and depicting them “too much” in her more advanced years.
Despite not everyone being supportive of what her work depicted, Baker’s skill in the art was unquestionable. Applying academic intellect to her work, Baker continues to vigorously pursue visual arts and plans to attend East Carolina University for studio arts.
Though she has faced trauma and hardship in her past, Baker uses art to illustrate physical manifestations of cognitive thought and emotion while simultaneously creating surreal traditional paintings and illustrations.
