Brittany Baldwin
Brittany Baldwin is an artist based in Queens, NY. She graduated with a MFA from Pratt Institute and a BFA from Adelphi University.
Baldwin’s practice is rooted in experimentation and play. Many of her compositions employ spontaneous movement and bold gestural strokes that look as though they might have leapt on to the page.
Baldwin's process also explores interactions between line, form, material, and rhythm. Texture and material, smooth curves and sharp jags. Her works are often in a state of flux, rooted in shape but not contained; flat but layered in shallow space, balancing between control and chance. Some considerations are employed before play begins, size of the paper, which brushes and color. There is a balance of factors, rhythm and speed of gesture. The artist takes lessons from the feeling of the materials and the strokes results feed back into her further choices as she works; Increasing the opportunity for unexpected formal connections.
Baldwin questions her work as a resemblance to text, the written language, the unintentional, the energy of the gesture that connects by way of another as a means of making new connections. New connections between lines and form. Also ideas between connections to text, graffiti and logograms, and other symbolic forms of communication.
Baldwin's work brings to mind things that start with an intention of rhythm, poetry; the fluidity of an essay, the sweeping dance of street tags, lyrics. Her brush marks want to move from corner to corner, from edge to edge building a gesture, a structure of layers, creating form. It is here that Baldwin builds a figure-ground relationship in which the positive and negative space play an equal role of push and pull between bold marks and the whispers of the bristles.
Baldwin has created recipe for her process that assures varied results, no one piece can be a mirror of the former, each work is the result of specific circumstances to that one moment. Moving quickly with intuitive decisions leads to countless possibilities and exciting places. She also works within a fixed parameter that the work be one singular gesture.
As of late Baldwin has started to explore possibility through addition, layering, building shorter gestures on top and color theory. Working on a variety of surfaces including: newsprint, bond paper and mylar that allows the wiping away of material to create a new gesture but letting the other pierce through, sharing the surface.
Baldwin is also in the practice of creating her own brushes to expand and hone in on specific mark making possibilities.
