The Cross and the Cormorant: Liam Ross Baker
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The nimbus lends his subjects an almost-biblical quality, recalling the gold-leaf saints of early religious paintings. Ordinary bodies could be transformed by a simple circle into something worthy of reverence. Yet Baker's halos do not quite sanctify their subjects. They remind us that things can be sacred in their ordinariness.
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Anthea Mentzalis
September, 2026"Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part II, Samuel Taylor ColeridgeIn Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor shoots an albatross that appears alongside his ship. It is an act that seems senseless, but sets in motion a series of terrible consequences. The bird, initially a sign of good fortune and safe passage, becomes a symbol of guilt when the mariner is forced to wear it around his neck. His encounter with the natural world becomes a meditation on consequence and loss.
In The Cross and the Cormorant, Liam Ross Baker makes a small but consequential alteration: the albatross is replaced by the cormorant (alongside gulls, finches, hens, and pigeons). This substitution moves the image from the Antarctic imagination of Coleridge to the south-east coast of Tasmania, where Baker encountered these birds while working on land, and on fishing boats in his hometown of Dover.
Baker grew up surrounded by the particular rhythms of a rural and coastal life. His return to the water after completing art school complicated his ability to paint, and he found himself spending long stretches away from his practice. However, this separation brought a different kind of attention to his work. Time felt slower, his days more repetitive. Observation became unavoidable. Baker watched everything: the people around him, the birds, the water, and the changing conditions of the coast. In a chaotic world, we often turn to nature to ground ourselves. For Baker, it was the catalyst that helped him reach a new depth of looking. The sea entered the studio with him.
Like the ocean, the surfaces of his paintings are unsettled. Paint thins out and accumulates. Gestures interrupt one another as forms emerge and recede. There is no clear hierarchy telling the viewer where to look or what to understand first. Instead, the paintings seem to alter the longer they are observed. The recurring yellow circles and party hats that appear in his works remain equally ambiguous. Initially, they seem absurd. They interrupt our access to the image, but they also make us look through the interruption. The nimbus lends his subjects an almost-biblical quality, recalling the gold-leaf saints of early religious paintings. Ordinary bodies could be transformed by a simple circle into something worthy of reverence. Yet Baker's halos do not quite sanctify their subjects. They remind us that things can be sacred in their ordinariness.
There is a similar reverence in the way Baker treats people. His figures rarely seem to offer themselves to the viewer. They look away, existing without acknowledging that anyone else might be watching them. Baker paints himself, or people he knows, into his works. It is his attempt to identify two truths: how someone appears, and how it feels to know them. Perhaps this is why the cormorant is a more fitting figure for Baker than the albatross. It is a bird that moves between two worlds. It can be watched in flight and then disappear quickly beneath the surface. There is something compelling in watching a creature move through a space that remains partly inaccessible to us. We often only recognise the value of something once it has shifted beyond our immediate reach.
Life can alter without announcing the moment it does so. These changes can be painful; sometimes they are necessary; often they are both. The bird flies out of sight, and for a moment there is nothing to look at. It may return, or it may not. Baker does not attempt to hold a moment still, so much as acknowledge how quickly it can change. Instead, he uses the natural world to tell stories about the instability and freedom of being alive. To see the world as the bird does.
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