M.E. Baird's first and most enduring love is music. However,  he also had a passion for drawing as a child and as an adult, would expand this interest to include, painting, sculpture, design,  film and literature. Now more than ever M.E. Baird sees a symbiotic relationship between his art and music, whereby they inform each other.   

 

M.E. Baird initially studied Landscape Architecture and later Masters in Architecture.  For twenty-five years, parallel to his career in music and art, he has held academic and teaching scholar roles. Initially, academic work was a way to fund his creative pursuits.  However, he would soon develop a love for teaching and researching leading him to specialize in creative philosophy, creative process and creative thinking across multiple disciplines at various art & design schools and universities in New South Wales and Victoria.  These include RMIT, University, UNSW-COFA, UNSW-Built Environment Department, Sydney Univesity, Deakin University and Byron School of Art (BSA).  He has won several awards for teaching excellence.  Matthew left academia 2014.  However, he is available for workshops and discussions.

​​​​​

​

'GHOST BOATS'

2019 - present.

​

In 2023 'The Loner'  from his Ghost Boat series was awarded 1st place in the Maritime Art Prize,  Australia.  

​

'Boats, Ships, Oceans and vast bodies of water have been used in art symbolically for centuries, with many different representations. My initial attraction to boats and the sea came as a child. I grew up in a bay suburb. Seeing their forms clustered at piers or silhouetted cargo ships on the bay horizon gave me a great sense of calm and I was in awe of those brave humans who would crew these vessels (carriers) to far-off and most likely exotic locations.  However, as a young boy, I was involved in a minor capsising that trapped me underwater. It was a truly frightening experience, that would haunt me in dreams for decades.  Fast forward to 2019, and while undertaking cancer treatment. I strangely became interested in boats and the sea again. I found myself unconsciously exploring my emotions, fears, and uncertainty through these vessels that became the Ghost Boat series. Hence we now find them in all their bleakness and austerity as motionless lone figures in what appears to be a barren seascape, either awaiting the tide to return or dry docking, taking refuse and repair from the deluge of life. The cloured sphere/s is hope, an illuminated Jewell, to give warmth, light, companionship and a sense of buoyancy.' 

​