Beverly Baker

b. 1961 · Versailles, Kentucky, USA

She writes until the words disappear: letters layered over letters for weeks at a time, until the page shines like beaten metal.

The life

Baker was born in 1961 in Versailles, Kentucky. She has Down syndrome, and has been a core member of the Latitude Artist Community in Lexington since it opened in 2001, a studio built to serve all artists with an emphasis on those thought by some to have a disability. Working daily from a small, favourite stock of books and magazines, she has become one of the most internationally shown studio artists in America, with exhibitions from Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York to DOX in Prague and christian berst art brut in Paris.

The work

Ballpoint pen, coloured pencil and permanent marker on paper. Every drawing begins with letters and numbers, her own initial B most of all, layered and overwritten until only trace hints of language survive. She may work the same sheet every day for a month, and the burnished result has a velvety, reflective blackness with glints of blue, purple and deep red breaking through. Her work is held in the abcd collection in Montreuil and the Museum of Everything in London.

Why we love them

Most artists write to be read. Baker writes past reading into pure shining surface, and out-blacks any minimalist doing it.

Go deeper

• Beverly Baker at the Outsider Art Fair
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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