Tiffany Baker, is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist, working in oil, acrylic, pencil, digital media, and glass. Tiffany has developed a unique style of realist portraiture. Marked by vibrant palettes and considered attention to her subject's grooming, she merges the somber, the regal, and mundane, bringing forth her subject's intensity. In her portraiture, Tiffany turns life experiences into emotive visual expressions that re-imagine trauma, embed messages of connection, and celebrate her identity as a black woman.

Tiffany’s solo exhibitions include Smilehood and Other Stories, (Brooklyn, NY 2016), Heritage (Brooklyn, NY 2017), Light Beings (Brooklyn, NY 2018), and The Reflective History (Raleigh, NC 2021). Tiffany has shown in group exhibitions, including The Armor of Saul by Unjaded Curations (Brooklyn, NY 2019), Uhill Walls (Durham, NC 2020), the largest collection of murals on a 15-acre site, where her 20x20 ft mural depicts late fashion journalist and pioneer, André Leon Talley, and Ain’t No Time To Hate Exhibition (Liverpool, UK 2021) with the eponymous Anthony Walker Foundation promoting its message of social harmony and anti-hate. Tiffany is a featured artist in When We See Us a community exhibition by Souls In Focus presented in partnership with the NYC Department of Transportation Art Program.

Tiffany’s walkable art installation, The Reflective History honors the historic neighborhood of Rochester Heights, the first black subdivision in Raleigh, NC. The commission is made possible by The Conservation Fund’s Parks with Purpose program. Working with fused glass, Tiffany created three portraits commemorating Lilian Currin, an educator, Millard Peebles the founding contractor of Rochester Heights, and Willie Taylor Hicks a long-time resident. The entire project took 9 months where Tiffany and local landscape architecture firm, Design Workshop worked together from concept to final execution.

Tiffany’s work can be seen in the latest iteration of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real-Life Tales of Black Girl Magic! (Timbuktu publications 2021) Tiffany has created two illustrations featuring Haitian-Swiss Visual Artist, Sasha Huber and Ethiopian Lawyer/Activist, Yetnebersh Nigussie. Tiffany’s artwork is also featured in the HBO special adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel, Between the World and Me (2020). Her work has also been viewed on Vh1’s Black Girl Beauty, (2019) a six-episode series available on Youtube.

Tiffany creates murals in her local neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, and Fort Greene on community refrigerators for mutual aid initiatives aimed at fighting food insecurity. She has spent the last nine years creating illustrative content as a Senior Interactive Designer with CNN.

Tiffany holds a Bachelor of Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and has trained at SVA and The New York Academy of Art.

“I paint black people who are imagined, alive, and those who have died as a present-day, singular focal point in my portraiture. In 2007, I experienced a devastating death in my life and from that event forward, it has been my fascination to reveal the unorthodox beauty in grief. Storytelling is the cornerstone of my creative process and inspires the work I produce. Loss and connection are familiar themes in my art, and I am deeply intrigued by the personal events of someone's life. I often show my figures with a regal intensity in their gaze as if they're sitting across from the onlooker holding an unspoken conversation. My art bridges a relationship between the viewer and the subject to create a shared space of intimacy and trust. My desire is to express emotionally powerful artwork in which people witness a complex reflection of themselves.”
–Tiffany Baker