About

Hello and welcome

You’ve arrived at a site of art and reflections.

Take the opportunity to pause and connect through art with beauty, stillness, environments, and people.  Take the time to nourish your soul.

I’m an artist and lawyer based out of Sydney, Australia.  In my art I explore the interplay between the natural environment, human presence, memory, and the dreaming mind.

I also love climbing and have been climbing since the early 1970’s.

Underpinning much of my art is early exposure to the Australian landscape.  I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out on cliffs and being in the mountains; walking, skiing, climbing, running, camping.  I continue to love being in the bush and in the mountains.

Warwick Baird on the first ascent, Alive in a Bitter Sea, Blue Mountains, 1986.

I trained in painting, drawing, photography, and art history and theory at the National Art School, Sydney, Australia, and hold a Bachelor of Fine Art degree.

Prior to my art studies I studied Political Economics, Government, and Law.  I have a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Sydney University, and a Master of Laws from the University of New South Wales.  In my legal work I have had contact with Australia’s Indigenous people, representing them in gaining protection of their culture and establishing their Anglo-Australian legal rights in their land.  These experiences have given me a deep respect for the Indigenous belief of Country and Indigenous people’s traditional relationship with it.

Once, much earlier, I studied architecture for a year.  I remain moved by the art of the built form and spacial relationships.

In 1997 some friends and I made a documentary, Flooded Dreams, about a dispute over a large Indigenous burial site at Lake Victoria in the far south-west of New South Wales.  Much of what I believe and hold dear underpins Flooded Dreams — a love of spaces, environments and the Australian bush; the nourishing power of aesthetics and beauty; the necessity of tolerance and respect in human affairs; that abuses of power are to be resisted; and that how we connect to the natural world is crucial to human culture, the freedom of the spirit, and the nourishment of the soul.

I believe the messages in the documentary continue to be important.  I hope you watch it and are moved by it.

Limited edition archival quality prints of my drawings are available for purchase.  They may be ordered by contacting me by email or mobile phone.

I trust you enjoy my site and leave feeling better for having stayed for a while.

Thanks for visiting.

Warwick

Flooded Dreams

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