The Starry Night



 Painting by Lisa Haderlie Baker

It’s impossible to paint the twilight as it happens. That special dusk glow only lasts for a few minutes before nighttime settles in, and it takes Lisa Haderlie Baker more than a week to create her gouache-based landscapes, so she sometimes reworks the shadows and skies according to her own imagination. In Winter Street, a Christmastime painting of her Taylor Avenue block (she lives in the home behind the palm tree), Baker brightened the stars beyond reality to “an 1890s sky,” reflecting the decade both homes were built—before modern light pollution. Working as the art director for publications at the Lawrence Hall of Science by day, Baker also paints old Alameda neighborhoods and local nature scenes, capturing romantic, often anachronistic views of the Bay. “They’re representational paintings,” she says, “but at that time of day, it blends into abstract. It’s magical.”                                                                                                                     
—Christopher Danzig