Baden Croft is an early career Australian artist based on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. His large-scale paintings are shaped by an impasto stratum of thick, textured oil paint to reveal in its undulating topography images of striking natural beauty inspired by Baden's passion for surfing, spearfishing, free diving and exploring the rugged beauty of the natural world.
In harnessing arts’ unfailing way of orienting with the world, Baden’s oil on linen paintings are his tools for learning about the world we share. Cultivated with rapid, unapologetic gestures utilising a palette knife and scalpel cut paper stencils to render the canvas with bold renditions of his lived memories of land, sea and waterscapes, the works exude a sense of looseness, a storied freedom that captures the essence of Australia’s unique natural ecosystems. Native bushland scenes, underwater kelp forests, banksia and the pattern language of fragmented tree bark are both deeply familiar and innately mysterious, accentuating a collective understanding that what we know of a land that is home to the oldest living culture in the world is superficial at best.
Recently, Baden’s work has begun to explore ideas of ecology further, balancing beauty and desolate ugliness within the same frame as a way of processing mankind’s impact on the natural world. Richly coloured tulips boldly erupt from barren landscapes in a metaphorical and symbol-laden reflection of the consequences of European settlement, a theme that continues to evolve his practice to realise paintings highly sought after by art collectors and interior designers alike.
Baden has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne and his works are held in private collections around Australia and internationally.