Ghost Boat #23 ‘Doer’ by M.E. Baird (Original Painting)

ART

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M.E. Baird originally studied fine arts at Frankston Technical College in the mid-1980s. He later studied landscape architecture and architecture at RMIT in the early 1990s where he commenced his academic career. Parallel to his music and art practice he has held sessional lecturing roles at various art schools and universities in Victoria and New South Wales, as well as art direction and design for film, television and digital content. As a designer and artist, he has won several industry awards, both in practice and as an academic. In 2023 he was awarded 1st place in the Maritime Art Prize, Melbourne.

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Art Enquires: New South Wales – Contact Paul Brennan (Pack Gallery)

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Art Enquires: Europe, UK & America – (Macabre Gallery UK)

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CURRENT SERIES ‘GHOST BOATS’

2019 – present.

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‘Boats, Ships, Oceans and vast bodies of water have been used in art symbolically for centuries, with many different representations. My initial attraction to boats and the sea came as a child. I grew up in a bay suburb. Seeing their forms clustered at piers or silhouetted cargo ships on the bay horizon gave me a great sense of calm and I was in awe of those brave humans who would crew these vessels (carriers) to far-off and most likely exotic locations. However, as a young boy, I was involved in a minor capsising that trapped me underwater. It was a truly frightening experience, that would haunt me in dreams for decades. Fast forward to 2019, and while undertaking cancer treatment. I strangely became interested in boats and the sea again. I found myself unconsciously exploring my emotions, fears, and uncertainty through these vessels that became the Ghost Boat series. Hence we now find them in all their bleakness and austerity as motionless lone figures in what appears to be a barren seascape, either awaiting the tide to return or dry docking, taking refuse and repair from the deluge of life. The cloured sphere/s is hope, an illuminated Jewell, to give warmth, light, companionship and a sense of buoyancy.’