'In the case of, like, you know, the Rembrandts or a Clara Peeters—where these figures or still lifes are just emerging from darkness. And, really bold color uses on top of... you know, very dark... deep. There's a lot of depth. Basically, it's like, the browner and darker it is with hints of gold and pop—up front—that seem to disappear into the background. That might be, a Dutch Golden Age painting!'

—Scott Baker

For the second episode of 'Dutch Art & Design Today', I sat down with Scott Baker—a Seattle-based artist and all-around European art history advocate. Scott and I first met in early 2022, when I acquired an artwork he created, of a pixelated interpretation of Rembrandt's 1629 painting—Self-Portrait, Age 23—in the form of an Ethereum NFT. The original painting today hangs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which Scott is intimately familiar with, having grown up just outside of the city—whose museums house a treasure trove of artworks, by the Dutch Old Masters.

In this European painting and contemporary digital art-focused talk, we discuss how Scott first came to appreciate Old Master paintings and European art history, from Matisse to Frans Hals; his trajectory as a, primarily digital artist, and the process behind his work; the story of how I came to acquire his pixelated Rembrandt artwork, as well as his thoughts on NFTs and the blockchain, in relation to digital art; and to conclude, the importance and relevance of museums and Old Master paintings to the contemporary culture, of 2022.

View the artwork created by Scott, based on Rembrandt's 1629 Self-Portrait, Age 23, entitled Rembrandt Harmenszoon van 8-bit No. 01.

You can learn more about Scott and his work, over at his profile on Instagram.

You can find John on X @johnbezold and at his website johnbezold.com.

'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by Semicolon-Press.

ISSN: 3050-6662