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Duncan Baird is a native artist of Mississippi, currently working at Delta State University in Cleveland, MS as an Assistant Professor of Art. Encouraged during early childhood by his parents and his great-aunt, Susan Trigg of Greenville, Baird became “hooked on art”. Throughout his school years, Baird often took art lessons and even left for college with an art correspondence course packed in his luggage. “I figured I’d go to Mississippi State and then come home to farm,” he says, “but I ended up transferring the next fall to Memphis Art Academy, now called Memphis College of Art.” After spending the next summer in Massachusetts drawing portraits “on the street,” he returned to Memphis Art Academy, leaving after that semester to join the Navy and see the world. Unfortunately, he didn’t circumnavigate the globe; instead, he saw much of Vietnam, serving as a medic on a ship that plied the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin from the DMZ to Da Nang. He had no time to paint or draw, but his wartime experiences in Vietnam were creative influences later. Leaving Vietnam, he returned to the Mississippi Delta to farm, but he also created an art studio near his home. Obviously understanding his son’s passion for art, Baird’s father encouraged him to enroll at Delta State to study under Sammy Britt and Floyd Shaman. After earning his undergraduate degree from DSU, he pursued further study at the University of Wyoming, where he received his Master of Fine Arts. Baird found himself in far flung places wearing many hats—those of furniture designer, newspaper deliverer, rural mail carrier, house painter, picture framer and, finally, line supervisor for Modern Line Products in Indianola. “All those years of holding different jobs eventually led to the career I’d always wanted and provided the maturity I needed to instruct and motivate students,” he says. “Teaching is a joy.” Baird has a studio at his home—a place to retreat when he’s not in professorial mode, a place where he paints and sculpts wonderful pieces sought by many, a place where he and his work have space to grow and change. <http://deltamagazine.com/september_08/homeart.html>
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