About Cedric Baker
I was born in North Carolina and my family soon moved to New York City. I would spend most of my youth between the two places. As a young man, I served in the U.S. Air Force, after which I would use the G.I. Bill to pursue my childhood dream of becoming an artist. My schooling began at Sacramento City College where my main interest of study was painting, drawing and printmaking. Three years later, I would transfer to NYC to study at Pratt Institute to complete my studies in Fine Arts. Today I realize the Bay Area Expressionists and the Northern California painters have remained an influence, as well as my ten years as an employee at the National Gallery of Art here in Washington DC, where I became absorbed in day to day operations of one of the worlds premier art collections and museum operations. But make no mistake about it I’m the artist that I am today because of the decade of the eighties when I drove a NYC taxi and became consumed by the downtown arts and club scene that produced graffiti and hip-hop, and a new wave of painters like Basquiat, Keith Haring, and the American Master artist Romare Bearden who were Instrumental friends. Known for my figurative work where autobiographical narrative storytelling through social and racial entities evolve, my color field abstract paintings, on the other hand, evolve from a more spiritual inward place of meditative form and space using color and the prospect of experimentation and spirituality in my Soul Searching.