BETH BAYLIN
Beth Baylin, born and raised in Portland Oregon, received her BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. After moving to the East Coast, she began to explore photography as an MFA student at the University of North Carolina. While transitioning primarily to that medium, she discovered that taking pictures with an iPad allowed her more flexibility than traditional cameras. She prefers the large frame and ease of operation that it provides. “I was lost once photography went digital,” she says. “The iPad opened things up for me as I was daunted by the new technology." A longtime resident of Brooklyn, she taught art at the Packer Collegiate Institute. She also has an MSW and practiced as a social worker in Brooklyn. The artist has exhibited at Catskill Art Space (CAS) in Livingston Manor and the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance (DVAA) in Narrowsburg. She has work in numerous private collections. After spending many summers in North Branch, New York, she now lives there full-time.
Beth Baylin’s photographs are a combustion of color, reflection and texture that enthrall. “Having started out as a painter I think of my photographs more as painterly images. I search for intriguing juxtapositions and abstract relationships rather than literal depictions of what I see. I don’t arrange content consciously but prefer to discover interrelationships among random “still lifes” that have settled on my kitchen table. In making incremental shifts of position and perspective with my iPad, worlds open up. Microcosms emerge that seem to transcend the objects in front of me. The less I immediately grasp what I am looking at, the more intrigued I am.” The artist is especially drawn to the angled light of late afternoon, and is “enchanted by fleeting moments of sunlight on objects. Subject matter is drawn from what surrounds me, flowers from our summer garden, fruit, vegetables, and kitchen utensils. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens have been another source of inspiration. Photography allows me to be present in the moment. To “capture” an image when the elements come together is an intoxicating and thrilling experience.
