Solemn, an oil painting by Dawn Waters Baker
This episode of Big Blend Radio's "Toast to The Arts & Parks" Podcast with the National Parks Arts Foundation (NPAF) welcomes landscape oil painter Dawn Waters Baker, the NPAF artist-in-residence at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park for October 2026. It is her fourth NPAF residency, and a return to the park where she first worked in the winter of 2020.
Watch the episode below or listen to / download the audio-version on Podbean:
Dawn calls herself a painter of spiritual landscapes, and she talks with Lisa D. Smith about what that means when your subject is a living volcano wrapped in mist. She describes the community spirit she found in Nāʻālehu, what it was like growing up near a volcano, and how she has learned to stop chasing a place and simply receive it.
Along the way, the conversation moves from glazes and gold leaf to Nan Shepherd's writing on going into the landscape, the Milky Way over Mauna Kea, fireflies on the Gettysburg battlefield, and why art helps protect the places we love.
Father Damien by Dawn Waters Baker
Conversation Highlights
Four residencies, four parks: Dawn's NPAF journey began at Big Bend in 2015, then Gettysburg in 2018 and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes in 2020, before this month's return.
Community in Nāʻālehu: The neighbors, the small-town warmth and the sense of belonging that make a residency feel like coming home.
Mist, mystery and veiled light: How she builds layered glazes to show just a sliver of a landscape, and why what you cannot see can matter more than what you can.
Putting the phone down: Sketching, journaling and being still long enough for a place to show you who it is.
Going into the landscape: What the writer Nan Shepherd taught her about walking into a place rather than looking at it from the edge.
Art and protecting our parks: Why artists help people care for public lands, and what it means to preserve wild places for everyone.
Grieving the trees at Big Bend: Her love of trees, the gold leaf they inspire in her work, and what she is planning next.
Walking a battlefield: Painting at Gettysburg, spirit trees, the energy of rocks and fireflies at dusk.
Three parks, three wild worlds: A look at the very different landscapes that shaped her and a few stories, from Tuscany to the Survivor Tree in New York.
Why art is immortal: What her work gives back to the places she paints, and how she recharges with picnics and time outdoors.
Far Green Country by Dawn Waters Baker
Featured Guest: Dawn Waters Baker
Dawn Waters Baker is a landscape oil painter whose work has been shown in galleries and shaped by repeated residencies in America's national parks. Her paintings explore light, atmosphere and the quiet presence of wild places, and she describes herself as a "Painter of Spiritual Landscapes."
Website: DawnWatersBaker.com
Instagram: @dawnwatersbaker
Dawn's 2020 Hawaiʻi Volcanoes residency interview: Artist Dawn Waters Baker in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
NPAF & Podcast
National Parks Arts Foundation: NationalParksArtsFoundation.org
Big Blend Radio on YouTube: youtube.com/@BigBlendRadio
🎧 New episodes of Big Blend Radio's "Toast to The Arts & Parks" Podcast air every 1st Friday.
