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Home » News » Empowering or Ensnaring: Carrie Ann Baade Exhibits Surreal Narrative Paintings

Empowering or Ensnaring: Carrie Ann Baade Exhibits Surreal Narrative Paintings

Published March 2, 2018

Hell Mouth, oil on canvas, 2017

January 18 to February 22, 2018

Visual & Performing Arts Division of Gulf State College in Panama City


Detail: "Seraphim" 2017 Baade

Detail: “Seraphim” 2017 Baade

This month, Associate Professor Carrie Ann Baade‘s paintings were included in two exhibitions, Pittura Narrativa: An Exhibition of Narrative Painting, and “She is of the South,” which features work by women who were raised or live in the South and whose work reflects a sense of Southern identity. Baade (born in Louisiana) quotes from, interacts with, and deeply relates to art history. She paints in dialogue with relevant masterpieces from Modern period to antiquity, in order to reclaim them in a surreal narrative that is simultaneously biographical.

Curator of Pittura Narrativa, Jeffrey Taylor, explains, “Narrative paintings encompass those works that express concepts, ideas, philosophies, stories or any number of content-texts. The medium employs the power of visual images to provoke thoughts, arouse feelings and stimulate the intellect. A narrative work can call into question commonly accepted beliefs, relate histories or challenge authority.”

The exhibition Pittura Narrativa: An Exhibition of Narrative Painting opens at Quigley Gallery this month. The exhibit runs from January 18 to February 22, 2018, featuring the work of Carrie Ann Baade, Marcus Goldson, Anders Johnson, Ryan Austin Lee and Don Eugene Seastrum, at Quigley Hall of Western State Colorado University.

The second exhibit, Gulf Coast State College’s “She is of the South,” is a group exhibition featuring work by Carrie Ann Baade, Inga Kimberly Brown, Katelyn Chapman, Hannah Hill, Norah Lovell, Holly Ann Scoggins and Lauren Woods.

From the exhibit statement,”There are many different ways to express Southern identity and each artist provides her own unique interpretation, but there are a few constants. One is family, or multi-generational understanding of family, with a complicated history, deeply rooted in the land. Another is tradition, a certain way of doing things as they have always been done, which could be empowering or ensnaring. Finally, they share spirituality, whether dogmatic or mystical or somewhere in between. All of the artists share a narrative, often autobiographical, approach to painting. While the stories are different, they share a sense of mystery and bittersweet nostalgia that is particularly Southern.”

The exhibit will be on display in the Amelia Center Main Gallery (Room 112) February 16 – March 16. For more information, please contact Pavel Amromin at pamromin@gulfcoast.edu or 872.3886.