Mackenzie Baker
Mackenzie Baker was born April 2, 1997 and is a Boston-based artist raised on Cape Cod. After moving there at a young age and beginning the separation of her family through her parents divorce, she began to develop cases of anxiety and depression that would slowly begin to manifest over the course of her adolescent life.
It was in these moments that she realized she was developing depression and anxiety but didn’t know the name for it. She chalked up most of the problems to her hatred for the Cape and was willing to do anything to get out, bringing her to SMFA for her undergrad.
After years of understanding mental health and the struggles it can have on the human psyche, Mackenzie will be continuing her pursuit of understanding mental health through her work as an illustrator and an animator.
Her work has been displayed in shows like Timeless Juices (2018) and Room to Speak (2018) and she will be continuing to work as an interior designer at Crate & Barrel in the next upcoming months in Boston.
Why do I love what I fear? There are things that keep me awake at night wondering if they will be my downfall. These things fascinate me, they also give me anxiety. In my work, past and present, I have always touched on how anxiety can affect people, how it drives us to feel lost within ourselves, but I always felt like there was something more to it than just that. Working through this thought after feeling stuck in my work and creation process it became apparent that while I was focusing clearly on anxiety itself, I was ignoring everything that triggered it. Anxiety has more depth to it than just being anxiety and at times there is a mysticism to it that makes it all the more complex.
My development has unraveled the space around me. I have worked with the concepts of religion and the strain it has put on my ability to make decisions that will carry less of a burden. Making the plunge into studying the folklore around, not only religion, but ideas of the supernatural and mystic elements that have begun to keep me awake at night. They are irrational fears, but they feel real in every way.
It’s that fear of the unknown that is real that makes the unrealistic feel more real. That’s why the fear of the ocean, those unknown waters, that leaves me terrified of something that fascinates me. A space like the ocean has always had a pull on me.
There is a makeup here that decorates my psyche. These fears, rational and irrational, added to the clutter of anxiety that I have managed to shift through each day. My thoughts create a mess that I only I can sort through, but it is a mess that no longer scares me and makes me ashamed to be who I am. I am willing to share these feelings, these disoriented illusions of life I am always pushing past, to show the world who I really am. To no longer hide the person I am inside. In an effort to become more transparent I create these places from deep within to make sense of myself and allow any viewer who wishes to enter into my world the most clarity through my art and process.