Jack Baker (1925-2011) American, Oil on Canvas. Painting of flowers in a wicker basket. Signed lower right. 

Overall: 47 X 44 3/4 in. 

Sight: 39 1/2 X 37 in. 

#2745 . 

Jack Henderson Baker was born in Wichita Falls, Texas in 1925, and later that year his family moved to Ventura, California, where he spent his childhood. During World War II he served with the Coast Guard, then attended Pomona College for his Bachelors and Scripps College in Claremont for his Masters, graduating in 1954. He spent many years traveling the world, visiting Europe, Russia, Africa, India, and the South Pacific, and studied at the Académie Julien in Paris, the University of Mexico, and trained with Milford Zornes and Milliard Sheets. His extensive academic background and love of adventure led him to Addis Ababa, where he was briefly Director of the late Emperor Haile Selassie’s Academy of Art. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Phoenix Art Museum, El Paso Museum of Art, the Davenport Museum, and the Joslyn Art Museum, as well as hundreds of private collections. In the mid 1960s he married Marilyn Jane Carsner, with whom he had two daughters and a son, and settled down in Santa Barbara to teach high school until the late 1970s. In the 1980s he separated from his wife and began to divide his time between Maine and California. Acting as a director of the Wallis Foundation, Jack supported many important nonprofit organizations in Southern California and Maine in the areas of wildlife preservation, ecology, civil rights, healthcare for the underprivileged, and arts education. He became a local celebrity who attracted famous fans of his work like Julia Child and Steve Jobs to his home in Carpinteria, California, and was an avid gardener and raconteur. In his final decades he met the artist Fred Gowland who became his companion until his death after complications from a stroke on November 18th, 2011.