The Daylighter® is the classic KC truck light, known best as the automotive accoutrement of choice by hunting and off-road enthusiasts. Baldridge brings this emblem of the backcountry into the gallery space as a symbolic illumination of the hidden beauty that lies mostly in dark woods, roadsides, and smoky back rooms.  Daylighter will show Baldridge’s continuing experimentation with materials coupled with a strong aesthetic sensibility in a new series of paintings, works on paper, and a sculptural light piece.

Captured with a hidden motion-activated hunting camera, the “Animal Selfies” series synthesizes printmaking and photography to create dreamlike sepia toned images of fauna in the lush forest.  The unique prints are considered “pyrogravures,” an innovative method of printing where the charred residue of the image burned into wood is transferred to paper;  creating a print made only from carbon and burned resin.

A series of unique lithographs depicts single playing cards on separate pieces of translucent Gampi paper.  Though face down, the skin-like paper reveals the number and suit of each card through their backing.  The poker hand reveals itself, as if in a moment of x-ray vision during a high stakes game.

Baldridge’s paintings on diamond plate aluminum panels are sprayed with a spectrum of Plasti Dip® color shifting pigments, ranging from pearlescent white to various dark shades of green, blue, and violet.  These chameleon-like paintings create a subtle and sensitive invocation of truck siding and truck stops, custom car finishing, and man-caves. With a wink and nod to the constantly reverberating echoes of a legacy of abstract painting and minimalist sculpture, they seek out a unique aesthetic territory by transforming a loaded vernacular through material alchemy.