Welcome to my website. It’s about my ART

   Paul Baylock

         I’m an artist since forever. Growing up in the sandbox, playing with toys and improvised toys. Drew dinosaurs, war, and motorcycles. Sister Lucy Leonard, my high school art teacher at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in New Britain, CT, saw something in me. I attended Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, majoring in art education. Continued there for Masters of Art ED. while teaching art in New Britain. Made slipcase ceramic sculpture. Went on to CCSU for continuing education. Focused on painting and drawing, mostly the figure. Set up first studio in Gateway Crossings, former Amodio Movers. Zbigniew Gryzb was my neighbor and was frequent critic. Created a series of large works never really completed or exhibited. Moved on from there to my basement studio until I rented at the old Landers, Frary, and Clark factory for three years. Worked on my Crosses Series until I began The Hardware City Series, inspired by the factory and especially the windows, which became a repeating motif in the series. This series became the subject of an exhibit in the NEWNOW Gallery of the New Britain Museum of American Art in 2018.

Since retiring from teaching in 2012 after 38 years, I’ve been fortunate to be able to dedicate more time to my art. I began a new series called the Popular Science Series that features images and motifs from the magazine of the same name. The spark was a weekend trip with my wife Sonia to Cold Springs, NY. There in an antique store I came across a stack of the magazines. I grew up exploring the advertisements in the back of each issue. I began scanning the pages into Adobe Photoshop and rendering them into vector files in Adobe Illustrator. These then became vinyl cut stencils for my paintings. My most successful painting of the series was “Close Shave”, which I donated to the NBMAA and is now on display in the governor’s mansion in Hartford.