Out of This World

Out of This World

STELLA MARIA BAER `03

WHEN NASARELEASED ITS HISTORIC up-close photos of Pluto last summer, Baer was inspired. “Seeing those images taken by a spaceship from billions of miles away was mind-blowing,” says the artist, who decided to paint watercolors of the dwarf planet and its moons. The resulting work is typical of Baer’s unique visiondepicting celestial bodies in the earthy desert colors of her native New Mexico. Though a professional artist for only five years, she’s already gained attention: With 165,000 Instagram followers, Baer has sold pieces all over the globe and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Time and Scientific American.

The daughter of a weaver and a gallery owner, Baer rebelled against the art world as she grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and studied philosophy at Dartmouth. She didn’t pick up a brush until she attended Yale Divinity School, where graduate classes sparked her interest. “For a long time my paintings and drawings were a secret practice,” she says. Baer sold her first paintings at a student show in 2011. Word spread about her quirky concept—animals riding other animals—and she spent the next two years working on commission. Burned out in 2013, she took a road trip through the Mojave Desert. “There was something about the colors of the rocks and sands,” she recalls. “It was like I was seeing them for the first time even though I’d grown up in that part of the country.”

She began painting moons after seeing a photograph of the 2014 “blood moon” eclipse. Since then Baer has created more than 100 celestial canvases, incorporating the pinks, tans and grays of the Southwest. A recent move to Denver—where Baer had a show in May—may lead to a new perspective. “It’ll take some time to figure out how it will bleed into my work,” she says. “But it’s definitely a landscape I’ve been thinking about.” (See a slideshow of Baer’s work at the DAM website.)

Heather Salerno