Hetty Baiz creates paintings characterized by rich textural surfaces and interwoven layers of image, color and material. Made from complex processes that can include photography, printing, weaving, painting, collage and mark making, the final images are literally built into the material. They appear to be fading into the surface, or perhaps emerging from it, and the identity of the subject is absorbed into the materiality. Open ended questions about transience and the nature of being – of identity, mortality, and time, are intrinsic to her work.
Baiz’s first teacher was her mother, a painter and student of Hans Hofmann. She continued formal art studies at Bard College and Cornell University where she received a BFA degree prior to earning a graduate degree from Columbia University. Baiz also completed graduate work in Goddard’s MFA program in Interdisciplinary Arts, and was awarded a fellowship to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Baiz has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and her work is held in many private and public collections. Selected for the Incheon Women Artists Biennale in South Korea, she has taken part in collaborative art projects in China, Tibet, Dubai, Australia and France. Teaching art to underserved women at an NGO outside of Cape Town, South Africa introduced her to weaving, a technique that she now incorporates into her latest body of work. Fascinated by the art of Africa, she recently completed an art residency in Morocco. Baiz is represented by Calloway Fine Art & Consulting, Washington, DC, Corey Daniels Gallery, Wells, ME, and James Gallery, Pittsburg, PA.