The fantastical work of Jamie Baldridge weaves for the viewer visually complex stories that engage the mind and entrance the spirit.

Baldridge, a professor of photography at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, creates his fantastical works by utilizing not only photography, but also digital manipulation and collage.  The resulting images are full of depth, texture and an extraordinary sense of light.

His Vermeerish palette lends the eccentric images an old-worldly feel and their dark sensibilities recall the iconography and symbolism of the Victorians.  Yet there is something inherently modern about them– perhaps it is the subtly infused humor or the fashiony bent to some of the work.

There are stories at work here, some obvious, others more subversive, but all entirely up to the viewer to complete.  Baldridge has opened up the book to a random middle page and it is up to us to find the beginning and end.

To see more of Jamie Baldridge’s fascinating work, please visit his website.  I first saw his work this weekend at the Thomas Lee Gallery in Ashland, OR, so if you’re anywhere near the area, you could do the same.  ( Note to the Thomas Lee gallerist:  Immediately going into the archival paper, framing and pricing of an intriguing work of art is NOT the way to sell it.  Just sayin’. )