Saturday, July 12, 2 – 4pm
Jonathan Baldwin is renowned in Albuquerque for his work as a musician and Radio personality. A cornet player who played with bassist, Zimbabwe N’Kenya, J.A. Deane’s improvisational ensemble, Out of Context and others, he also has been a longtime DJ for KUNM’s All That Jazz (Fridays). What a lot of people do not know is that for more than 50 years Jon Baldwin has pursued another passion as well – painting. Born in Mt Kisco, New York, he attended the Mannes School of Music, but it was the New York City art and music scene where he says he got his “real education.” It was the 60’s… Ornette Coleman was playing at The 5 Spot Café (and turning the New York jazz scene on its ear), and artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauchenberg and Frank Stella were changing the mainstream of painting. Inspired to create his own collages and paintings, he met up with the “Park Place” artists through various Free Jazz sessions and began showing his work (at the Park Place Gallery, at M.I.T., and in Denver, Colorado). Over the years, and after a series of relocations (Colorado, San Francisco, Taos), Baldwin’s paintings have changed and shifted, depending on his inspirations and locales. When he settled in Albuquerque in the late 70’s, he was painting ‘specific’ landscapes inspired by his own surroundings and by the eastern Long Island painters, Fairfield Porter and Jane Frielicher. Later, he moved to more abstract geometric paintings inspired by Picasso’s “weeping women” series and Richard Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park” series. In his artist statement, Baldwin writes, “I like the dichotomy that exists between the painting as an object and the integrity thereof and the transcendental quality of color and line creating light and visual pleasure.” This exhibit is a retrospective which brings the scope of Baldwin’s work to the eyes of many who have never seen it before.
Exhibition Dates: July 12 – August 30, 2015