Welcome to Julie Baker Fine Art

Brook Caballero: The Catalyst of Inquiry
Opens Friday, May 12, 6 – 9pm
May 12, 2006 – June 11, 2006
Open Monday - Saturday 10am – 6pm, Sunday 11am – 5pm

Mountain Choir, Brook Caballero, 2006

>> preview the art of Brook Caballero

Julie Baker Fine Art is pleased to present the first solo show of Nevada County native Brook Caballero. Caballero's ability and subjects are extremely individual. His work is sometimes sentimental, and other times, sarcastic and odd. He creates finely rendered watercolor or oil landscapes with Tolkien-psychedelic accents and utopian overtones where boats float into throat-tunnels and unicorns still exist. His work transports you to dreamlands. >
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In “The Catalyst of Inquiry”, the figure becomes more prominent than the landscape. In “Mountain Choir” a small watercolor of a woman, naked from the shoulders up, the figure and landscape appear to become one. The woman's hair, windswept and tousled, echoes the patterns in the mountain range behind her. She appears larger than the mountain, an Amazonian beauty one with nature. Caballero's landscapes are clearly influenced by the environs of the Foothills of Northern California and celebrating the mythic image of the carefree California girl. Several works in the show are small oil portraits which Caballero glazes beckoning the technique and rich colors of another age. The show is also comprised of a wall of 5 x 7 oil, watercolor and collage on masonite paintings - looser sketch like works that show his range of imagination.

As a young, contemporary artist, Caballero uses tools from our digital age to help create his work. He starts by compiling images from Google searches, and his own photographs. Then from this pool of images he creates collages in Photoshop. He then uses the collage as a reference for a painting. Just as often, he starts directly on the canvas with no plan at all and then creates an atmosphere or landscape that he photographs, imports into Photoshop and adds to it. He then paints the additions. Caballero continually refines his technique. His influences range from Flemish Painters such as Vermeer to contemporary artists such as Neo Rauch and Peter Doig.

Caballero, 28, received his BA from the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, CA. He has participated in group shows at Gescheidle in Chicago and Giant Robot in San Francisco. This summer his work will be featured in a group show in New York City at Morgan Lehman Gallery. Caballero recently finished co-directing a music video for the Band Hella.