Meet Artist Stella Maria Baer
Urban Agenda gets to know the painter, photographer, and Instagram sensation whose artwork is out of this world
By Sarah Emily Gilbert
Painter and photographer Stella Maria Baer has been on the move for much of her life. She was raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, worked as a wrangler on her family’s ranch in Wyoming, went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and attended Yale University’s graduate school in New Haven, Connecticut where she settled with her husband and dog. But like the planets that Stella Maria Baer paints, there seems to be some sort of gravitational pull on the artist that takes her back to the west. Currently a resident of Denver, Colorado, Baer has not only made the desert her home, but also the source of her artistic inspiration. Using her signature earth-toned color palette, Baer creates minimalist watercolor paintings that often feature planets and moons. While the western terrain and the cosmos are literally worlds apart, one look at Baer’s Instagram shows how similar they can be. In one of her posts Baer writes, “Sometimes Colorado looks like the moon,” and her photography proves it. The rock strata look like Saturn’s rings, the sand resembles a desolate planet, and the vast landscape evokes the same sense of wonderment that is caused by stargazing. Below, Urban Agenda learns more about the talented woman who has made the west her muse.
I know you grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. What made you settle in Connecticut for some time?
I lived in an artist colony in New Haven for a couple years, and then went to graduate school while working as a studio assistant to painter Titus Kaphar. The community of artists in New Haven kept me there for years. But I couldn’t shake the sense of being pulled back to the southwest. About a month ago my husband and I packed up our car and started driving west with our sheepdog.
Were you always interested in art?
I rebelled against the arts for a long time. My father owned an art gallery while I was growing up, and my mother is a weaver. My grandmother on my mom’s side was a sculptor, and my grandma on my dad’s side was a watercolor painter. My grandfather was a photographer. So in a way art was the landscape of my childhood. But for a long time I wanted to get away from the world I grew up in. I experimented with photography in high school but I didn’t start painting until after college. For many years it was a secret practice that I didn’t show to anyone.
Why do you paint?
When I paint I have a sense that I’m doing what I’m meant to do. A couple years ago I took a painting class with a professor named Robert Reed who used to say that every painting is a struggle between what you want it to be and what the painting wants to be. Most of the time painting is wrestling. But every once in a while, something unexpected happens, something beyond what I’ve planned or intended. In those moments, painting is like falling in love or returning home.
Where do you find inspiration for your artwork?
For the past few years my work has bled out my memory of the colors of the deserts in the southwest where I grew up. My paintings have been a way of reckoning with this sense of being drawn back to the desert – a place I couldn’t wait to leave when I was in high school. But inspiration comes from many places – the photographs from the Mars rover, Georgia’s O’Keeffe’s paintings of Abiquiu, Agnes Martin’s use of pink, Rothko’s mauves.
How would you describe your personal aesthetic?
Southwest space age cowboy. Modern minimal martian.
What are your favorite things to paint? What is your favorite paint medium to work with?
I love the limitation and freedom of the sphere and the unpredictability of watercolor.
Do you work best in a particular type of environment?
I tend to work best in my studio or out in the desert, where the hills resemble Mars or the moon.
Mammoth Moon 2014 (watercolor on paper) 26 x 39"
I see that you do a lot of space-themed paintings. Where does your knowledge of space come from? Is it something that’s always fascinated you?
I spend a lot of time looking at photographs from NASA space voyages, as well as depictions of astronomical events down through history. When I look at the photographs the rover takes on Mars, I see a place that feels like home. The landscape reminds me of the canyons where we went camping when I was little. Painting moons and planets is a way for me to draw upon those memories of childhood while still moving into another space.
What projects are you currently working on?
Right now I’m preparing for a show in November at Galerie 102 in Ojai with sculptor Elisa Fonseca. Elisa and I lived in an artist colony in New Haven nine years ago, and have talked on the phone every other week since then. The show, called “Genesis,” is of my paintings of moons and planets and Elisa’s stalagmite sculptures.
When you’re not painting, what are you favorite things to do?
I love riding horses. I used to work as a wrangler at my family’s ranch in Wyoming, and I miss the long rides across the mesas through the sage. We drove up to the ranch this past weekend and went for a ride under the cottonwoods.
