Julie Baer, Crater lichen (Diploschistes muscorum), 2025, Mixed media on wood panel, 24 x 24 x 2 in

Julie Baer's work reflects deeply felt encounters with local nature, focusing on small-scale, often overlooked native land- and waterscapes as they shift through seasonal cycles. She seeks to capture the immediacy of a first glimpse of a scene, following the changing shapes, colors, and compositions shaped by movement and shifting light.

Her approach balances scientific attentiveness, aesthetic abstraction, and a sense of human spirituality. She aims to surprise viewers with uncommon vantage points-looking down, up, close, and inward-encouraging the same sustained attention she brings to her subjects. Central to her work is an interest in the complex design and recurring patterns of nature: intricate life forms on aging trees, dense intermingling of growth and decay on the forest floor, dynamic activity within water, and fragmented skies filtered through canopies.

Through heavily layered mixed-media surfaces-including painted paper, metallic pigment, glass beads, seashells, sea glass, and pebbles-her compositions become textured and uneven, as though life is emerging from within them. Often without a fixed focal point, the works reflect the mobile and sometimes disorienting ways nature is experienced.

Baer's practice is also shaped by environmental awareness and concern for habitat loss. By honoring local ecosystems, she aligns her work with calls for native restoration and rewilding. Her work ultimately invites viewers to reconnect with nature, reflecting research linking time outdoors with wellbeing, and encouraging attentive, restorative engagement with the natural world.