Glen Baldridge

The Medium & The Message in Glen Baldridge’s Subcultural Aesthetics

Scratch tickets, bullet holes, found photographs, a coffin catalog, obsolete electronics, the shape of words, all are material for Glen Baldridges’s multi-layered compositions. For much of his career Glen Baldridge has primarily created in one dimension, works on paper. A master printmaker and draftsman, Baldridge is also a painter, videographer, bookmaker and sculptor. In all these incarnations Baldridge merges the mysticism of magical realism with the aesthetics of youth culture delivering a slyly critical reading of these times, albeit an exuberant and sympathetic one. Working with processes such as marbling, spin art, screen printing, photography and drawing, Baldridge’s works are inexplicably achieved, the result of years of experimentation and innovation in the studio.

With a new series entitled “Wrecked Exotics” opening this week in Portland, Maine and an accompanying artist book, Baldridge revisits a 1980’s mimeograph technology, the risograph. With eighteen framed prints in tricolor frames found photographs depict the detritus of red sports cars buried in roadside weeds. Misregistered and dragged lines from each color pass on the risograph make for dreamlike optics. The images, bereft of human life present us with a punch line sans plot—a fiction, a drama, a narrative of the end.

Wrecked Exotics 18 Framed Riso Prints, 2025

From Warhol to Chamberlain to David Lynch, the car crash has long been a subject of interest to artists. Baldridge’s foray references humor, horror, nostalgia, abstraction, performance art, pop art and cinema, all with just three colors. Both technique and conceptual rigor enliven the wrecks—we hear the engine rev, the screech of tires, glass breaking as they roar off the page.

Touching on the spiritual and the material, the narrative and the abstract, Baldridge’s practice flips the scrip, revealing an alternative relativity. With his text pieces, “Guys, What”, “No Way” and “The End’s Not Near It’s Here” we are reminded of our mortality with a grin and nod. As if to say…Life, much like Baldridge’s prescient works, is funny and mysterious, luminous and delirious, saturated and psychedelic and totally worth the ride.

Wrecked Exotics 2, 2025, Riso Print Edition of 10

GLEN BALDRIDGE: “Wrecked Exotics” Opens October 3rd 2025 5-8 pm at North Optical - 68 Washington Ave Portland ME 04101

We visited the studios of Glen and his wife, artist, Louise Sheldon in Maine to see what they’re working on, chat about art & others.

JEFF: How many years have you had a studio practice ?

GB: About 25 years. I graduated from art school in 1999 and it took me a minute get myself situated and figure our what I was doing. I started exhibiting my work in galleries in 2004. Alongside my studio practice, I also ran a print publishing company called Forth Estate from 2005-2015.

JEFF: What medium do you work in ?

GB: I studied printmaking, which is still an important part of my practice. I also paint and draw and use photography but my primary focus is on works on paper.

JEFF: What are the themes you’re thinking about when you’re starting a new work ?

GB: Man vs. Nature and anomalies in the natural world. What is hidden and what is revealed. Camouflage and pattern. Humorous posturing and youth culture—specifically American subcultures.

JEFF: Do you work in series?

GB: Definitely. I use printmaking to make edition-ed works, which are usually stand alone projects using photogravure, silkscreen, etching, lithography, and woodcuts. A lot of my unique/non edition-ed work is a bit process/material driven; I have multiple series using various types of image making; like trap cameras, poured acrylic paint, plastic dip, gouache “rainbow roll” brushwork, etc. I jump around a lot materially, but there are thematic threads running through the various series. Also, I try and link the material processes or techniques with the concept of each particular series.

Whoah, 2022, gouache on paper, 58 x 39 inches

JEFF: Why do you chose to work with paper & paint?

GB: I’ve always loved printmaking and working with paper. There is a fun collaborative element when working with Master Printers in a printshop and I’ve always loved all the planning and problem solving involved, as well as that reveal when the paper comes out the other side of the press or out from under the screen. The last 10 years I’ve shifted to painting a bit in order to have more immediacy, use my hands more and equipment less, and to have solo time to experiment outside of the printshop. My last show at Klaus gallery combined these approaches; by bringing in watercolor painted paper to the printshop, silkscreening on it, and then bringing that paper back to the studio to be finished with more painting added to the printed elements. I come up with different processes a lot and try to figure out the right idea for the technique I’m playing with, which often involves some sort of experimental printmaking.

No Way, 2022, gouache on paper, 38 3/8 x 27 1/2 inches

JEFF: What are you currently excited about working on right now in the studio ?

GB: I’m finishing up a risograph edition-ed artist book and suite of riso prints in multicolored plywood frames that I started in 2015. The prints are all from found photos of luxury cars crashing into the natural landscape and use the riso machine ‘tire tracks’ intentionally to echo the crash image and the tri-colored frames. I’ll be showing those and releasing the artist book at North Optical in Portland, ME an optical shop run by friends that also regularly feature artists in their space.

JEFF: How would you describe when you’re in your flow in the studio?

GB: Material play is an important aspect of the work. I like to see a tension between control of the materials and some material generated surprises that appear through the process—-ink bleeding under blocked out areas, wet materials penetrating or resisting each other. Behind every successful piece, there is a lot of trial and error, but ultimately it gets me closer to figuring out what I’m looking for. A lot of my series of works build on what I’ve learned from past experiments, mistakes or successes, that I can elaborate on.

Glen Baldridge is represented by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in NYC and Halsey Mackay in East Hampton and lives with his wife Louisa, their son and their dogs in Maine.

GLEN BALDRIDGE: “Wrecked Exotics” Opens October 3rd 2025 5-8 pm at North Optical - 68 Washington Ave Portland ME 04101

See more of his work at glenbaldrige.com and @glen_baldridge_studio