Studio Talk; Vitreus-Flux Watercolor

My guest this evening is David C. Baker. And Mr. Baker is a painter and we will be discussing a new watercolor technique which he has developed vitreous flux water color on the panel this evening. Our dentist being a painter and teacher at the Massachusetts College of Art. Robert we need a representative from the Wynn gallery. David Baker who grew up and studied in the Boston area. Why have you moved out into the woods into New Hampshire. Well it was after the war I ventured up to the woods just to visit friends in the north country very near Mt. Washington fact my wife and I went up there for a vacation. August rained every day for two weeks and I thought if the country could be so lovely in the rain no more city and I never went back. You know when I went back and quit the job I was doing a job after the war story isometric exploded views of blades for her company was enough to get everybody to go through the country.

So I went up there to strike out for myself. Don't you feel isolated living out there in the mountains. I imagine 50 years ago yes there was transportation. What it is now it's going place there are always people going through and people interested in art and what you're interested in. It's exciting place and it's a changing turn there's a big turnover of people up there. I believe now we've been there 20 years. I think the new people that have moved into that mountain area just about equal. The natives the people who live there and their families live normal lives. Do you find these people are generally interested in the arts and in what you're doing at the beginning or why why didn't that guy Baker work for a living you see me sitting in the backyard a morning a lot of kind of pain and they kind of look askance at it but since then and since other artists have moved and I've become a fixture they don't come around and look at the arts particularly but they will defend me if any other artist comes in and paints

my bridge are my mountains. It's a nice relationship. I'm very fond of them. Are you particularly interested in the type of landscape that you're surrounded by. Are you are returning to nature bug in other words. I think if you visited my gallery you'd find about 50/50 return to nature and then adlib what I mean is my feelings about things poetry music or the mountains or figure where and then I get back and do a I like to ski out to a subject that is recognizable as a ski something I did a lot when I did about twenty nine stories with Ford Motor Company for a time. You know the type of work that they demanded but I haven't done anything for six years. For them it's kind of hard to go back and do that type. I think that type of factual work working for major was a necessary training to go through the sort of built up vocabulary of material.

Two years ago I decided to take a thought I'd take a year off from painting directly from nature. Everything I did I did from nature and I could begin to see particularly in a one man show a monotony a picking up of. Aaron as you might see in composition and carrying him through another thing and so I decided and that I guess I'm going on three years now doing all my work except special commission work in the gallery working from the top of my head and it's a French or if you like your more stimulating approach using the same type of subject matter. I may or I may not. Some border on the abstract realism not truly abstract because to me abstract is more flat like a wall design. This has all of that although as far as the rules of Ariel and your perspective though its content would be abstract. You mentioned your gallery. What do you mean by that. I put up a gallery right on the main road. And once the

main the main the main road to the White Mountains Route 16 is the white mountain highway. Of course I didn't paint right off when I went ups up there. That's probably a good 18 years after I finished art school that I dared to try to to try to paint and utilize my four years training to make a living through art and why I why such a long race. Well the work came along and I had a family when I moved up the mountains and went and do our Jeepers. I ran a restaurant one one year I worked for a photographer I worked for years in a hardware store. All these things I was sort of chafing at the bit hoping I would dare to break away and do nothing but then after you painting doing this this I mean in my spare time all of us and a friend of mine visited me one weekend we said for a lark Let's put some paintings out on the front lawn. We put up a log fence

that was after the 12th of October when the tourist tide is at quite a low ebb. I sold one painting a day for 10 days. I said no that were a business. I built the gallery at United but live together and we've had to do a sense and that is my center of operations. I show outdoors as well as an interior gallery for. Exhibits So the group grew from there. Then it's me you know just your own work. Mr. Baker and I gallery are now you always have done this and you know I would like to have and I hope eventually with this many current finiteness in New Hampshire. I'd like to have a gallery where I could show more than mine. But right now it's on the money. Wouldn't you think it would be more interesting going to the gallery on the part of people who are in the area for any length of time if more people are represented. I think you're right though I'm I'm sort of proud of the of the

following I had built up. People will come and look up acres I mean there's a certain pride I get out of that but I certainly would like to have some some other painters in Whitley eventually. How did you happen on this water color take me. You'll be demonstrating in Winterfest February. You mean the various flux water colors trees flooded streets flocks Let's start with that. What is this tree is Vicky's flux that's a good question after I've done several of them I decided I had to put a name on this technique and some couple friends of mine who were artists. We sat down and went through the dictionary and World Book and try to find out names that would tie in with what I was actually doing working on not absorbent surface vitreous glassy not absorbent flux the water is put on and the pigment mixed as on a water color palette very similar and allowed to flow in solely the colors to flow and when the water evaporated it would leave

my pigments in a state of movement in the blocks and give me very strange and wonderful textures and that mixtures that I couldn't get on paper that is absorbent than its name. I don't understand completely. So they are now you said you do apply the water color in the water evaporating Is this normal water color paint or is normal water can't paint is transparent life and doesn't look like the typical water color then that in the way that they dry in the water evaporates what is the difference when you draw one. The color of your paper sucks in and holds right up to the tail of a brush but this way the way I am painting won't let me go back little bit I prefer not meaning of watercolor paper. I'm not painting a marker all over myself I am now using a commercial board which is a shiny wall board with the plastic baked on I believe it is plastic. I was put on I haven't found out yet something like Oh

my God like him are like Marline. In fact is C a trade name. Right now I'm sure there are others that are as good and what I have to do first is to break down the surface tension. Had I painted right directly on my life well that you would have an effect like water on a waxed car but built up so I rubbed it down with with promise. I actually use a household abrasive and rub it down with a very fine plastic sandpaper. I'm 3M and get a matte finish this I have to prepare and direct sunlight so when I get no reflection of the sun I have a matte finish. And then I stopped my painting by squeezing the colors directly from the tube under my boy. It becomes a palette of the palette becomes my picture and then when that first glow of color has dried it's completely abstract and mild. But I keep turning it

around for different ways and find what admixture makes the best. Textures for a sky a tree or mountain or figure and then. I add more paint. But every time I add paint I am dissolving what is already there and so I wind up at the end of the session with one thickness of color. I'm not building up an opacity. Now when you finish the picture and look at it with a magnifying glass a 20 power glass you can see through the interest to seize the bright and I am a white shining through which is not unlike the old masters working on white and glazes and getting Illuminati through the finished picture is much lower key than traditional watercolors on paper which almost look chalky by comparison but it's luminous lower key low key but luminous. In fact when it wasn't when you say blokey there's no depth of colors and that none of the richness that we generally associate in terms of.

Well I don't know what you think of as low key water color on paper and on the palette the wet color is much richer and darker. My finished effect is as though the colors were still wet rather than the dried out. Like you I'm thinking of Hue I guess by Loki. It's a lot deeper richer commonality. Pick one of the reasons for using the absorbent water color paper the rest takes three years to develop a type of mechanical bond along with the water color. This gum arabic which is used as the binder in the water color is not all that strong and you run into problems of. Flaking flaking or simple mechanical damage rubbing against it pulling me before the surgery started. This I ran across an old water color palette of mine that had color on it was very thick. Been standing for two or three years. And it had

not chipped and not cracked away. Certain colors for instance. VanDyke Brown or some green might have given me trouble but I keep away from those colors and use colors that will work chemically well together. I would be afraid of using it. Think of using in the past oh in any place on this. All my lights for instance. Suppose I took my blue from the from the tube and laid it on if I wanted to light a blue. I would go over it with a spine and spray water on our wet brush lightly then spines and my blue would become lighter. I could take a wet brush and draw through a slowly and get a highlight light so I can get all my gradations of the Cowra by the amount of paint that I'm lifting off. It's really a matter of keeping air inside have you get a nebula and then you then you develop an unpainted you find what you want but in no time you are at a

loss because water will wash any area of the whole thing off you haven't lost the paper. Me. Course it is more expensive than regular paper. I mean if you're having a bad painting session you can just take your sign yes I'm washing all up let it go down the drain right along. That is thing. This is similar in a way to the you're dependent on white. Is this correct in much the same way that you would when you were using. A typical watercolor paper. The White Yes but I'm burning the roof or moving but you've got to plan ahead and utilize your rights you can't spined and right and regain them. I mean you're finished painting the white of the panel shines through the color very necessary. So this would be much the same would you say this is true. The way a watercolor function is like goes through and sounds more like a lazy man's watercolor where you don't plan ahead.

You owe it to his friend to have I think the possibilities of it are so great that you start with that with a new wooden wind up with the skier coming down the slope I mean there's so many things that can happen not together and that may have gotten some pretty gnarly. Spring skiing. But wait. From what I understand of interest clocks it gives you an opportunity to have the flexibility of oils. I feel that that water car is a little bit more rigid but on paper. Ah if you have a if you have an effect that you don't want it's phrased what difficult to remove it without throwing it out. Well I mean yes yes right right. And whereas the way you're doing it with just locks you have the freedom of. Of the oil where if you want to you can paint over or remove the paint entirely and

start over again. But in oil if you put a dark color. Like cover over a dark you're eventually going to have to worry about something bleeding through you. In my technique with the use flex I am removing all that possibility because every new dab of paint is wetting everything right down to my surface and becoming the single thickness of water and pigment. So I'm not going out of paper. Yes I see. I was worried at the beginning and. About the compatibility of the materials. So I wrote in detail to Ralph Nader who has done research on this and I had some correspondence with him. I was hoping for a pat on the head from him. It's a really got something good here but he gave me some advice that was helpful. But but no accolades when he approves of the technique he was skeptical. In fact when I was in New York I tried to get him showing in Hackensack I had to get him over

to do criticize in person what I had but I couldn't arouse his curiosity had much and he was helpful. I didn't know that they showed any I can say. I didn't and I won't again. But. I grew up in that area and I know their feelings. And then this thing now exists. How do you consider the medium now has it. Is it more or less a technical venture or is it broadened your wild horizons and creative possibilities in your work as your work changed much since you were at work has changed much but as a being a technical manager you may have a point there. I think I think in a couple more years time I could get kind of tired of this and try to invent something else I think half the thrill of it was finding this is a new way to paint and apply everything I've learned through traditional training to do it well in a sense now I hope

this isn't an unfair but I think the most. Times artists have happened on a new medium of their own new ways of working because of necessity in the hands of they would have from themself in terms of what they wanted to get out of their work what they wanted to do for them. And so by necessity had to discover let's say the LA Times I was so happy to be working full time in what I train for and I am painting time now and making a living out of that. That really doesn't matter when I work in St.. I sing or Howard Sandow what this is this is my moment my my thrill right now my invention and I think eventually it will go into something else and what I've learned from this will be applied to that. I like to see others try this and I've tried to interest some artists and a few have made a few stabs at it but if you go by the rules of anything you've ever done before. It's a

disappointment. It's not the kind of art that I can even write a book on. It cannot be formulated it is just too free as running water is free. But I believe the thing that I like about David's work that over the years he's always been interested in and trying something new not not sticking to areas that are already been discovered and made popular. He's always interested in finding something new that is interesting to him that's a kind way of putting it. Is he being from something else. Well I need something new that I might be phrased another way that perhaps I missed a bakery in getting tied up where with technical procedures and rather than the aesthetic part of what he's doing. I'm not that much of a student. I know how serious the effect

is of what I want to get out of it and I do not know what I begin now just what I'm going to have. And believe me when I get a canvas painted start flying around it's going to be affected by whether I had a good day skiing or some music I've heard or a movie I've been to or a book or pointers. So many things. To me it's a freer more facile outlet for my expression than any other medium that I have been using. Then Baker why should anybody be interested in the work of an artist that doesn't know when he himself admits that he doesn't know what he's doing. Now we do say that again please try to deny this. Why should anybody be interested in the work of an artist when he himself admits that he doesn't know what he's doing. You say you start the canvas you know you're painting you don't know what you're doing. Well I certainly don't talk that way or sing that kind of a song to the customers. There's anything ambiguous I do is to me is to them a writer Jack their comments on it

is a revelation of themselves in the looking in a mirror and telling me I should take notes on what they see and hear. But if they do find something that that is to their thinking fine and it's worked that way. In fact many times I have got more inspiration out of people's comments. As far as titling a painting I grow just this this just again seems I don't care about the title doesn't matter to me what I call it. If it is a good composition if it has a nice symmetry design color color to me. Porton. Well then when you say that you don't know what's going to happen when you start working on this thing that isn't entirely true. No it evolves I don't know. Except that you are looking for your design your color your.

Quite often I will work on one maybe a day or so and then several days later come back to it or see something suddenly and from across the room. This is the way I've got to go. I must take this out. I must add here. Oh it wouldn't grow like that. I suppose it's like someone composing on a piano he plays he finds a chord Now that's nice and I work how can I break that dissonance down which way can I go. And he builds from that. He doesn't anticipate first what I think is a going out what no people come into our gallery and then look at a painting they say well what does it mean. We drill quite a bit with modern are some I'm on are some abstract art. And I don't feel that you can look at something as what does it mean. I don't think the artist had anything in mind when he did it as a meaning it's I think it's a way he feels and I think a viewer should look at it. And I just sort of experience it and then

after a while after looked at it for a while I just thought about it a lot. Being very important. You can't just walk out and expect it to just suddenly he was something you have. I think you have to think about it and I mean it well you're not suggesting and they're so worried and their feelings have no meaning. Yes I that's what I'm trying I'm trying to suggest that the feelings the feelings are the meaning behind behind the painting and behind the viewer's concept of it. And only then there is a meaning there. Yeah yeah right. I don't think what I mean is if it's not I don't think the artist had anything set in mind when he started at least not in abstract or something abstract. It's a feeling he has a way away feels when he gets up in the morning or. Or. Something like this it's not so much it's not not so much that he wants to swim. Not so much he wants to express and wants to put across Pacific specific scene type of psychotherapeutic exercise.

I think so yeah I think so yes but I don't think it's too much concern to the public what the mean. No I don't think so either. I don't think the artist should be concerned at all if a person likes or dislikes weird why he likes or dislikes No I don't I don't think that's important. I think what was wanted the viewer would look at it through the eyes of his or her own experience when I when there was a question question that there's no meaning in it. All right let's face it that tone deaf. That's what I was trying to say. Yes. And let them look at something safer. That's what I was trying to say in the getting. I mean if if someone looks at a painting and they say what is the meaning. And if I understand what you're saying Mr. BAKER. The problem is not with the artist or the painting but with the viewer. I think so. I get mad when people do that. And because I don't know what to stand I mean you can't argue with them. And there's

something in it. Because they're not going to hear it. It's why do they ask you. What do you mean. Both of you gentlemen meet the Papago of time I don't that's why I'm questioning you perspire because I it's a startling experience working with the public and I have a lot of lots of people from in the gallery saying when I was standing right over just something that I know that they have liked and tried to avoid the avoid the issue. I've had people come up to me when there was the show on Boston Common and spend five or 10 minutes explaining what they didn't like and I said wasn't that anything like that. Yes and they were telling me they wanted to I said that's a good show. If for the number of people that come to that show and there are three pictures that you like it's a good show because the next person a girl like another three I don't try to find out about the others you don't understand because you never find out no matter who you are how well a person tries to explain it to you.

We need the people coming in and a lot of them have a feeling that they're supposed to be supposed to be meeting in in the painting this is this is not so. That's something you have to feel it through your experience. I'll look at I look at a painting. And I'll look at a painting and I don't see anything particular in it. It may affect me differently reading consecutively different days. I mean I look at it one day when I feel fine. And say wow this is this is fine and I stand I like it for various reasons of the way I feel that day and when things are going I don't I think its. Paintings are to be experienced by them you know not to have anything nice to see anything in there to healing. Not not that some paintings realistic and he's known for truth not not put across as specific as a specific viewpoint.

Well it points across to pursue a specific viewpoint then the viewer would naturally be affected by that which he is seeing right now. If what you're telling me is it depends on your mood as a viewer and then it might just as well be a mirror that's hanging in there because you can do the same thing with up with your own image and I think painting is probably more you know supporting to use a mirror. I I don't I don't I don't think people looking into a mirror could see themselves as well as they think that perhaps through a painting I think painting will give them would say I mean that I look at something you know say well yeah I feel that way. And and it may be made now a very fine feeling but you wake up and you look into a mirror and all you see is your face. And you may not you may not see anything any deeper than that. So a

painting I think painting is yours if you were a chance to understand himself better. Because it makes and it makes me today makes you think of how you feel. And this in this whole this makes you. Right now right in the morning why do I want to think about the fact that I feel that way. You don't want your own you want you want to spoil us from your thinking. You know when you have your choice of attaining something of the customer's point of view we should be happy a scape for them to go and relive that piece of art again. I've had people come in and they go right up to a page and say this is what I want and biotin take it home is very rare but those people are very careful to tell them all right you live with it a month a year bring it back if it doesn't wear well.

To me that kind of falling in love with a painting is like like picking up a magazine. I understand a competitive competitive eye out on the magazine cover and she discovers great at the end of week it's a week old. Is it going to live. It's much better in the long run and I have bought my wife and I have bought out and it's usually after several visits and even then some some of the paintings that I have put back in stock in my gallery and unloaded which it hasn't lived well. It got so that I ignored it and that's bad. If a painting makes you mad or makes you happy at least you get a response it's good as something. You choose what you want but if you ignore it it's nothing. You know we're going to spank you. Yeah. Don't you feel at all that there are many galleries who are in a sense trying to train the public. Now if people come into a gallery and hopefully expect to see themselves in a mirror and therefore be flattered and therefore by the painting to make

the whole ball go around which would possibly be very nice. And come on and these people then find some totally new form of art doesn't isn't it the galleries. In a sense too in a sense train these people and what is the gallery's role in this respect they're not just out to please people are they. No I think the galleries visit the galleries places society is to not only display the artist's work but but to it to educate as you say the artist into certain into and into understanding. Actually it's a sense of understanding oneself through art. To use an example we started a gallery 10 years ago in New Hampshire. And this is in Kaka New Hampshire which is a very conservative town and at the time we had things that were quite quite conservative. And we

started to bring in. Modern abstract work and people didn't understand it. And they wouldn't give it a chance. And we had all the ladies come in and say well my grandson did better than this and is in kindergarten and they say this because I don't understand it like I see Congress selling anything abstract. Well this is Cancun in Western New Hampshire going abstract what has taken us a long time. But the West the Midwest the southwest they're much more experimental in their own culture. I don't think the middle in the Midwest is a more experimental I think that's about the most conservative stereotype of the country. Well in my 10 years at the gallery I prised in Ohio it's a space there. But that's me. Nice. Tell your mom to galleries in the Chicago den. So when you said it's all well now I see they have really quite. A number more galleries in Chicago than they have in Boston. You see Boston being one of the

larger cities here and I would say quite and really more of an active interest in the galleries and selling then and here generally when you think of the national magazines and pay I don't I we don't think our hind at all I feel indebted you know in a in a way to support the Midwest. And so yes I thought I was doing what I. Think you're doing for the EXCUSE ME WHAT DO I FEEL THE ACT temperature more or less in my little business because some of the tourists I could make a living on selling to New Englanders like place people going by paintings and most of the 50 states and about 12 foreign countries. And I found Ohio seems more to make a conscious I can't really say he's done very well in that area of New York City and about 50 miles around New York to me that they have collected the more of the better things that I done.

There's Boston Baker conscious No. Are you too far out or too far in from Boston do you think. I'm trying to think what I have in there. In this area there are a few of the more experimental ones in the Boston area but few as compared with the rest of them. What type of work will you be demonstrating at the Arts Festival. What are the dates of your me be there. I mean what would I be painting at the Irish Festival. I was hoping you wouldn't ask that question. I'm going to have with me just to just to back me up a little. You work with about 75 slides showing what I can do now call my demonstration a vocabulary of this is what happens on board and if something comes out fine but do produce from the inside in front of an audience I think will be a difficult feat. It will be a fun thing to try. But our Maori try to make it clear to them this is what happens when you spray water on when you blot it and so on and if an effect comes up in

front of me I will develop in front of them. But I will not as most good demonstrations I've done. Have it all predetermined what I'm going to do to do private show. I can't do that with this technique. I've done it in water color in oil demonstrating because there I know what's going to happen. But here I don't know how you're going to change your role from that of the artist and that of the performer for this particular period of time and that way every 20 seconds to the 26 It went by how are you going to grow a beard and wherever and wear dirty tennis shoes. No I'm going to have him come in and look around say where's the artist. Oh no no. When I won I knew a lot about it and I had to be and that was it that was the day I finished my four years at Mass and I thought I knew everything then. But boy I'm pretty uncertain now and it's much more exciting. It's very good.

I wonder about this fulltime art business I've had a number of friends who have for years said golly if I could just paint every day and I tell you just so much and not not do anything but pain and then they get the opportunity and they die. They don't like it. They say I do nothing to stimulate me there's nothing to keep me active. And generally they go back to teaching part time where they do something else just to kind of have personal contact or have something happening around them. But I feel sorry for teachers who I mean who have had training. And to me it's almost like treading water to have to repeat formulas year after year for the hungry students. I think they miss a lot of living. Do to have something new come out every day you work is what I live for. Now I couldn't do as as some

artist do and I'm just not that business minded I guess who come up with a good technique and a lot of good Boston itis whose whose name I mean a lot in the art world who have found something new found something 25 30 years ago and have made a good living copying themselves. Quite young. And that's right I found it at age 18 and it's I have to keep copying and I say mature statement so that you really like this life of the United States are very much very much hours on my own. I could ski during the winter I can take off in the summer time I can paint 10 days in a row or skip 10 days in the end my my lighter he has failed and I don't have a schedule I don't go to so many hours a day. It's in fact I feel since I've got into this I've been this that I've retired.

This is you know everything in my life but I've retired. Right maybe it's not. Well when you're running your gallery in a sense that's when you go into business during the summer months. Do you have well fewer hours or do you mean when you've got an overrate hours I might be time getting a haircut or go out for a picnic or something and I leave the gallery opened I came in one day and found a note I picked up painting so-and-so and I'll pay you in two weeks and I didn't know which painting it was I had so many around in two weeks they showed up and told me what one they took and paid for our tree. Then in spring you feel that you're looking at some of your your mountain pictures that we have in front of us now and reproduce those are reproduced right up on the gallery that came out in Appalachia.

Not a scene. Do you feel that your work is is quite original or do you feel that you had influences it of greatly affected you like many painters do and if so who are they you know other artists when you were younger and that's it. Oh I think I've worked under the protective shadow of the of the Impressionist for years and I like to shake it but they're pretty safe company to be in. And you follow some of their their or their color ways of working and you and your work. Caro these are black and white reproductions I like Alice the colors like you know the colors are not as impressionistic as the traditional style of watercolor. No you know that there are more. Some of those there are more of the coloring. Who are some of the traditional watercolor in this current and kings. Home are lower and lower key and being right in the bright brightness of the of the Impressionist which I do like a very luminous. I haven't been able to develop a

very light. I keep singing tonality with this technique I think it's possible but I've been leaning a little heavy on the pigments and they are lower key. I'm still a little worried to think your technique given might go back to that and brought it up again as soon as you touch that surface with your wet brush again. You dissolve what's underneath and it makes as with a paint that you that you want to put on and I can see that you would naturally end up with with a muddy looking painting with much like a palette. Well you have to be very careful of that and wash off and start again and limit your colors. It is very easy to get into that mud bath. Then it's not a happy picture then. No no and that's why I think it's very discouraging for a beginner. I think a student who was brought up to express himself and without any of the.

Hidebound drawing from nature courses behind him is going to could have an exciting time and get some some very wild effects but not very deep. Pretty much on the surface. Now as I understand the accidental water color of water colors tend to be rather delicate pigment sensitive to light and tend to fade. Why don't you agree with me here. But it's just a matter of kind of the history of watercolors they tend to keep them in museums keep them in the dark as much as possible they will protect them very very carefully because of that. Don't you think the quality of of watercolor pigment that is so or some such a competitive market and they've had to upgrade the chemical quality. Certainly you couldn't get the pigments now that that Sergeant used. There were also unsafe. The student can go out blindly and mix colors that are going to be fairly chemically compatible.

Just that the pigment south is exposed to all of the elements and that it's going to react with with gases for instance in a city like Boston which is loaded with pollutants that not pigment because it is so exposed will react rather quickly and where there is nothing protecting it well up in the sweet air of the mountains I had a painting out in direct sunlight for over a year and found no effect at all. I mean it was a brutal experiment but I wonder how you how it would stand up. How do you know there was no that it didn't crack it didn't come off through a glass it didn't check it had separated. I'm happy thinking of the bonding. But as for changing well trained even your. Even the pigments they use on Kyra's they will change and so they'll train change rather dramatically right. Well let's say in the end it's a good thing. A smog bound coast going to deteriorate and more out would be something

look it can be replaced it'll keep the market going. So. Building obsolescence now that you are in your bakery talking. How do you harness. Well how does the artist feel about this happening to us where. I've been rather discouraged. If if I live that long but I don't I don't think that it will change. They would change that much. You protect the surface the same way. The other paintings are protected but I like something about it. Where I cried like a spray and that acrylic spray. Makes the car looks as though it is wet. If you take a pallet and spray water on half the pallet and you see a noticeable difference in value it's darker and the richer tone of wet car is better than the dry color the bright colors which you get on the paper might vitreous flux I spray with air with a

matter like. And and it comes out like wet. And so is that that is sort of a built in luminosity in effect you get the last minute. The other one I wouldn't dare leave it without glass but I'd prefer to use the acrylic spray than glass even though it has barred me from many water car shows. I try to get in the Boston market society show and it wasn't on paper and it wasn't under glass. The American the American watercolor society show has put down rules. It must be on paper to be a true watercolor and that is certainly a little better but doesn't make sense does it. Well that you design it there anything only that but by the by the support rather than by the media. It doesn't seem right but there are so many acquiesced mediums out now that I think they have to separate the purest water color and they can have a jury for that and then a

jury for they the past and the acrylics and and casein. But I did and I was I was very pleased last. Last year I sent to several national and regional shows that I had two paintings accepted as watercolors and got national prizes on those two and they were reproduced and written up and they're coming out in the magazine this coming year. Asked What color eyes I mean I think that's a vote for my side because. So many places you cannot exhibit them unless you put them under glass as it were. A trait of the old masters in allowing students to work in their studio or in demonstrating what they do was always to leave out some of the rather important parts of the take me. So that wild people would think that they knew what the whole thing was about. They really didn't.

Are you are you going to rely on this by the traditional method in your demonstration. You mean keep secrets. That's right. I have been hit over the head by more well-meaning friends who say you secret here keep them. No I don't at all because I think by the time that I've kept it under my hat so long little mildew and nobody really got any fun and I did get at least find out of it. You know I just don't pass it on I don't in this demonstration that so students will come in and I will answer any questions at all and help them with it. You know I would like to have other people do it because because I'm sure they could produce something very exciting and individual is not the type of technique that if I taught them all I knew they're going to turn out bakers. No I don't I don't want to teach the way Harrah always done. And there's so many good Harrop painters in the country there's only one original. You know look at de Kooning. He's great David Powers.

But all those little shadow followers. I know I would show them the technique but I won't tell them my mistakes. The phantom pain. Well it seems that you must have some converts already than you and you found it difficult to to sell other artists scientists and this way of working with a vitreous flux or and you not attend to this very often. I haven't been in a position to do it except a few Sunday painters behind me as they have this is one thing we haven't discussed I don't think how long you three years ago three years ago I started doing it when I was on my palette and how the colors it stood up on the palette and I said let me make a palette and so I took some math some board a shiny board and sprayed refrigerator and ammo and then I took black sheets of mace and I had a local garage put on their garage lacquer and rubbed that down but that gave it an even surface. Now this commercial board that is our pad has a very sign service a beautiful service to work on and that's what I'm using right now and getting much more

satisfactory consistent results with it. I notice that you've done some murals are these. None of the same technique no murals I've done. Have been an oil rig with him. You find it easily easy to change between the medium. No I don't well it's quite an OEM you know. For a fact I think I'm painting less now than I did several years ago. It's so hard to get into watercolor. I can't conceive how to get into an oil. You think you see in water color everything you see now everything I see is in flux. It's just a state of mind you're thinking I think I think and I've done it to do commissions that would be a change over a period of several weeks before I could get into it feeling oil and then in desperation try to find vitreous blocks again. It's not easy to change or change over the act but interest like seems to be a good and good name for the type of thing that you're doing because in the way you

describe your approach to the whole thing remains in flux while you're actually working. Would you. I understand that you've seen some kind of strange things up there in New Hampshire and I think that we have a unique opportunity here to have a trained eye. Tell us about some of these funny things I mean we have the in the eye in the air right. Flying saucers. Yes. We've had a lot of excitement there and in several occasions I've had to make paintings. Memory sketches of what I have seen. We haven't seen any more than the rest of the country or the rest of the world has. But I think only an artist I know that has seen something would describe it to us but us know what they look like. Well the most scary one was coming back from from Boston was I remember I kept a log of us the night of the twenty eight very very cold night of February 1958.

And I saw a light in the sky about in Rochester and followed it all the way up to do us a baby and it was about 10 below zero. No traffic on the road and I get out of account turn off the radio motor and listen and watched and pretty soon the light went right overhead no clouds in the sky. All the stars are out full moon and I could see the moonlight on the fuselage and this blinking light. And it proved to be a large barm abettors up so high. It was a plain and explainable. And I said to myself Well this shows how foolish people can be in the following lights and thinking they see something. But then as I got back into the car close to the horizon three objects about the size half the size of the Moon that's pretty big when sailing across the sky following the contour of the mountains all three shone brightly like cold light like a TV to perfectly round. Not like an electrical lamp

shining in your face. There's a flat light. And all three went off at once and they came on again and moved south and stayed still in the one to the south went off in a sort of a sawtooth motion and went about one third the distance of the horizon. The other I waited for other cars to come along as a witness no sorrow with it but I noticed the rest of the way home there were jets in the air. How far away were you from these lights. Well. The further mountain had a white barn on it that may have been three miles away and I could see the moonlight on the barn but this is much more luminous. Let's say three to ten miles away which would make the objects from anywhere from two to seven hundred feet diameter. We be pretty hard to tell. It didn't come between me and any mountain but I thought they were in the area and they certainly weren't

a natural phenomena like a meteor. Their information on their different intervals didn't change between them I mean they remained as a unit of three until that one took off and went ahead. Oh really. The other runner went right again you know and I've seen others and made paintings of them. I was working with the ground observer corps and I talk with a captain who was in charge of our area working out of Bangor Maine and he came down to discuss the job we were supposed to be doing not UFO's and I couldn't get him to discuss UFOs at all. Finally he put me out put me up by saying Well I'm I'm about to retire from this business anyway and I'm not interested in UFOs nothing to it. Name is Captain Perry and a funny thing happened at least a year later. Oh I sent a painting to Captain Perry of one of these you know incidents and he never answered the letter and I assumed he got it two or three years later. My brother in law was listening to Long John Neville and he had some characters are talking about

UFOs in the middle of his program he said and this here painting by David Baker I loaned to us by ATSIC Captain Perry who didn't believe in this stuff and got out to help a t i c a t i c a slight technical intelligence center like Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Where are all the information on UFOs go to a dead end and stay there behind seaman. What about what type of detail if any show up in your paintings of the UFOs. Well just what I described and you just lie as lights and one painting it was a series of spot spot lights with the source hidden behind a cloud. It couldn't have been a plane that stayed in one place too long. One of them was witnessed by two of my friends who had been hunting that night and that that space just maybe the three of us within 30 miles of each other saw the object in the same area and got a triangulation of the area it was in and the lights

pulled up into a solid mass of light and went sailing off to the south and we had a good triangulation. The lights came together and formed one line. The other spotlight just go right up into it into a ball of light. And when does it become larger as that as I didn't see it at that point. All I saw it was as a spot and I noted the time and as method of it and direction was a moan out in that particular I declare the night was cloudy cloudy. Could you detect the light bouncing off of other things. There were thoughts of the type of light that would test shadow. That's interesting I've never heard a report where people noted say reflection and water. More reflection in a mirror and try to try to prove it as being something there or not not in the minds I know of. So all you have seen as a light glowing light or series of light odd lights and the one time we saw a solid I say about

7 of us about the proportions of a cigarette have virtually way sailing across the sky very high and I put my binoculars on it and every forty nine seconds it would like to rationalize and reflect like a mirror. The sun was out setting in the west and is usually does and not not a cloudless sky but this object sailed away and every day every 49 seconds whether it was a human eye city of itself or whether it was actually turning in one facet reflected. That's the way I rationalized that it was unexplained. But a whole lot of us saw it and I certainly wasn't. And something really strange. Just a lot of time watching the skies UFOs in vitreous flux. Be aware of your New Year's abilities coming in to do that. Are most of all most of your sightings we heard down here in the Boston area that there have

been a lot of sightings up in Exeter had a lot of them right. Yeah that that why are they thinking on New Hampshire. It is near a base. And I think any Air Force Base has had more than its share of sightings. Whether it's because they have the equipment to watch the skies or whether it's whether these objects are these things these entities are coming into areas that are significant is a moot question. Why would they be interested in an regular civilian airport so long as they are there's no airport there is no form of consequence. There are no big hydroelectric plants in the world that have had not had a history of phenomena. This created mine. Is it possible that this phenomena is created by the fact of

being and is the sill It is either there for something because of the variance of the facilities it doesn't seem possible. I would like to have it explained. I'd like to be a big relief to a lot of people I think you take it seriously to find out that we've been made fools of and there is a possible explanation but it's gone so far now that the government has raised funds to have private universities do research on their own. Take it out of the hands of the Air Force. The who is in the Air Force is not in a position to do research and shouldn't their job is to protect our skies and all their only interest and that is is a going to do any harm. What kind of harm have they been perpetrated so far. The objects in the history of them you know they have been tied in with plain disappearances and plane accidents as a whole history of that that it is reason to believe would reasonably make one think that they that they're being around it

because I've been part of the accident. So the thing so that there is some reason to fear them somebody is reason enough to house all the requests to chase and shoot has been ahd been. Requested more than wifes but I can't believe that because of the speed of these vehicles as far as I know they have been hit they can outrun any anything we shoot at them as well as anything we chase them with. And David Baker I hope that when you're giving a demonstration on the vitreous flights what a color medium that you've developed. You'll bring down a painting or two of your if you will. You cause I don't have any of them left really. I almost lost a sayer when I explain to a man what it was he had bought He looked at me in such a funny way I thought I had to hand him his check back. No if anyone wants to bring up the subject I'll just take off. I love to talk about it and I learn a lot from other people's what they have seen by discussing

David Baker thank you very much for joining me this is a pleasure. Studio time.