Hilary Baker calls her current show at Rory Devine Fine Art, Predators—which we might loosely define as any species that dares to assert its presence amongst the invasive, marauding, and all-devouring species of apex-predators, we know as humans.  Baker’s subtitle is, “And Other L.A. Stories”; and they do tell stories, or at least begin them from a timeless aftermath where past is forever present, her subjects captured in media res—variously forlorn and bemused specimens—pilgrims and prowlers all cautiously open to surprise, sniffing out the next bit of intel; hungry, not unlike their human counterparts, to know what goes, or maybe for just a bit of nourishment.

Wilshire Boulevard Looking East (2018), 24×24 in., acrylic on canvas

In her trademark graphic style, Baker foregrounds her non-human animal subjects against our monumentalized anthills:  spare, almost dessicated, receding perspectives of iconic L.A. locations—both commercial and cultural landmarks:  Angels Flight, Bunker Hill (on the brink of transformation from its crumbling crown of aging Victorians to the promontory of courthouses and culture palaces of the last 50 years), Dodger Stadium, the old Boyle Heights Sears tower, the iconic Felix Chevrolet.  With virtuosic, almost impossibly eloquent draughtsmanship, Baker renders her subjects in flat browns, grays or chalky blues, deep russets, their fur or plumage rendered with minimal striations and cross-hatchings or simulated faux-bois woodgrain, all silhouetted against flat, matte-painted backdrops of nowhere skies in desert-neutral or post-industrial hues—desert blues, acid green, or soft pink; sunset auras of deep terra-cotta or slate, blue-blackened night skies.

Bronson Gate, Paramount Pictures (2018) 24×24 in., acrylic on canvas

A rat sniffs the air in the shadow of Paramount’s Bronson Gate entrance as her companion moves past her, presumably towards a gutter offering something more immediately gratifying than a three-picture deal.  A cougar reclines tentatively in a bike lane off Washington Boulevard, oblivious to the noir glamour of the once fabulous Parisian Room—forever the hippest cat.  A red-tailed hawk—fugitive from Norman Bates’ taxidermy den at another iconic Victorian (on the Universal Studio lot)—turns away from Janet Leigh’s climactic screaming in Psycho (Red-tailed Hawk, Van Nuys Drive-In) (2020).  A coyote slinks disinterestedly past the sleek glass Casa de Cadillac showroom—impervious to its gleaming vehicles.  A bat flies over an almost ghostly Hollywood Bowl.

The iconic is as ephemeral as the eyes and sensibilities that first shaped it, later took it in—or ignored it altogether.  (The dog in Gone (2021)—looking back at the old concrete Hardy Holzman entrance to the now-razed east campus of LACMA, with a black sun looming over its western flanks—might almost be the ghost of the dog in her earlier 2018 Bunker Hill rendering—Union Bank (The Castle and the Saltbox).)  The popular notion is that ‘rats and reptiles’ run this town, while the rest of us are just looking for a place to burrow.  The larger truth is that we’re all its predators; and we’re also its ghosts.

Hillary Baker: Predators — And Other L.A. Stories will run through January 21, 2022 at Rory Devine Fine Art, 3209 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles 90018