Artist Lecture: Firelei Baéz at San Fransisco Art Institute

During Spring break, my fellow grads and I drove to the Bay Area to explore some great art and to see artist Firelei Baéz speak about her paintings based on her interest between the crossover and evolution of Caribbean mixed with American culture. Being a young Caribbean female in America, Baéz's works vary from self portraits to historically driven narratives. She began her lecture by explaining to the audience a little about what drives her work, saying that she uses humor and fantasy to create  newness to self.
She showed us her early paintings, driven by the topic of skin color. She described to us the "brown paper bag test" in America. This was an unjust test in which certain privileges were taken from those whose skin color was darker than a brown paper bag. She quotes it as "American standard of Whiteness." Baéz took this idea and drove it into her work where she create these self-portraits to embrace her skin color and her hair as well. She described her using color and the shades of brown as an access to psychology. She also emphasized that along with skin color, hair was also an issue. "Black" female hair was encouraged to be covered up in her culture, so with her self portraits, she recorded the different states of her hair while emphasizing the flat brown surface that made up her painted silhouette. By keeping the portrait flat and minimal, Baéz lets the viewer delve into a politically charged art experience without the distraction of realism. She leaves her eyes to look back at the viewer, as if she is speaking through her 2-dimensional world into the soul of another human being just like her. These pieces, to me, are very approachable in that they speak on a level in which the only thing that matters is our humanity as equal despite skin color or hair type.

Another method of self-portraiture she executed that interested me the most are the larger palette portraits in which she applies paint intuitively to create abstracted patterns within the silhouette. By masking off her silhouette and creating an energetic play of color within the portrait, Baéz creates an entirely new energy within the frame of her own portrait. These portraits resonated with me because of the way i experiment with paint in my work. I was interested in the way Baéz applied the paint in such as way while keeping the outline so crisp and precise. At the end of her lecture, I even asked her how she was able to mask off the edges so that the paint didn't pour out of the confines of her silhouette. She told me about frisket and I and I am excited to try to use it in my own work. I had tried other ways of masking off areas, but none of my attempts have worked out the way I wanted them too. Thanks to Firelei, I am excited to try something new in my own work. This Summer, I need to work even further on my body of work to take them too the next step, and perhaps introducing this suggested material may help me figure things out.