ABOUT THE ARTIST
exploring the quiet weight of history and the emotional resonance of the objects we choose to keep
I’m drawn to heirlooms, handmade artifacts, and architectural fragments—things that carry the marks of time and touch. Influenced by vintage interiors, aged textiles, wildflowers, and botanical forms, my work weaves together personal memory and a broader sense of place. Through layered surfaces, fresh and vibrant colour palettes, and intimate scale, I consider how memory lingers in material objects and how our stories continue through physical things, reflecting on themes of inheritance, care, and the whispered narratives embedded in the everyday.
I work with acrylic paint, acrylic mediums, ink, oil pastels, and other mixed media to create expressive, contemporary botanical paintings rooted in a modern visual language—celebrating what has been preserved and what continues to grow. My process is grounded in intuition and discovery—carving shapes from negative space, allowing forms to emerge gradually through accumulated marks and veils of colour. I often begin with a bright ground, letting it peek through or vibrate beneath softer, muted tones. The interplay between layers—what is revealed and what is concealed—mirrors the way memory and history surface over time. I am drawn to simple shapes, expressive line work, joyful colour, and substrates that carry their own quiet stories—working on dressmakers’ muslin, house-painter’s canvas, and other fabrics that echo the tactile, timeworn feel of the objects I paint. Flowers and botanical arrangements, vintage vessels, and textures reminiscent of old textiles are recurring motifs, each a tribute to time, history, and the enduring presence of the things we hold close—and the things we choose to keep.
Meet Christie
Christie Baker is a self-taught Canadian painter whose work explores memory, material, and the soft-spoken significance of everyday objects.
Born in Edmonton and raised in Calgary, Ottawa, and Toronto, Christie spent twenty years in Vancouver, where she and her husband, Matt, raised their daughter, before returning to Toronto in 2019. She began painting in her 50s during the uncertainty of the pandemic, discovering a deeply personal, intuitive form of expression. A published writer of creative non-fiction, with a professional background in beauty and fashion, Christie brings a strong sense of narrative and appreciation for aesthetics to her art.
Christie works from her home-studio in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, where she and Matt live with their cat, Giorgio. She began exhibiting in 2022, and her work is now held in private and corporate collections across North America. Christie serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Artists’ Network, and is an active member of many arts organizations throughout Canada.
