Before the Storm

Ed Baynard once described his career as a simple stroke of luck. The self-taught artist’s ease and patience with his chosen mediums comes through strongly in a retrospective now on view at James Fuentes Gallery in New York. Titled, “Fire Island Pines 1981,” the show is specifically dedicated to one of the many summers he spent on Fire Island, a cultural hub for gay artists, activists, and writers, and a place in which the late artist found comfort.

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Rife with electric movement within concentrated space and calculated repose, Baynard’s oeuvre is characterized by its placid, detailed minimalist paintings and drawings. The Washington DC-born artist’s career began when Agnes Martin introduced him to the gallerist Marian Willard and her eponymous gallery in New York in 1970. The introduction proved to be fruitful, and the following year, he returned to the U.S. after living in Paris and London for a decade, settled in New York, and began to show his work with Willard. Throughout this period, Baynard dedicated himself to a deep exploration of painting, drawing, and printmaking. His minimalist yet imperfect approach developed to contain immense detail within flat compositions.

Throughout his career, Baynard observed flowers, rugged natural landscapes, and his friends and lovers. His works contain a reverence for the space that exists between his subject matter, inspired by Japanese woodblocks, Georgia O’Keefe’s New Mexico landscapes, and his own interiors. An artist with a variety of reference points, an exhibition at White Columns in 2019, zeroed in on his floral compositions, underscoring his Zen approach to space. 

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Now at James Fuentes, Baynard’s works go back to the summer of 1981, the months in which AIDS took his world by storm. Notably, this time also marks the artist’s departure from his well-known minimalist style to more personal and narrative works. One drawing, Self Portrait-Sunset (Late July 1981), 1981, captures turbulent weather brewing in the distance. The late afternoon light swirls across a wooden pattern, and the artist’s own shadow is cast across the paper. The work is all the more plaintive with the added fact that he later lost his partner to the disease shortly after. 

Baynard’s renderings of memory are tactile and tender. Seashells, sun-withered pillows, and various seascapes set a tone filled with nostalgia and limerence. Each energetic scene is fraught with a certain intensity that lies under the dark, blue water. One drawing captures flags blowing in the distance—the wind a harbinger of the upending elements to come. 

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“Fire Island Pines 1981” is on view at James Fuentes Gallery through July 19, 2024 at 52 White Street, New York, New York 10013.