Baby Pierre hits the big time in his first show
He represents just one of many portraits from 50 years of photography
“I had a dog and his name was King, I told the dog about everything.
Old King meant a lot to me . . . that hound dog is history”
— Neil Young (Old King, 1992)
WHEN ART EXPLODES IN YOUR LIFE
Despite war exploding around the world, the world of art is swirling around me with two major events happening in the past two weeks.
Baby Pierre made his artistic, and Internet, debut and four different pieces of art opened in two shows on Friday, April 3rd.
It took a whirlwind set of travel days to deliver art work to the Santa Rosa Art Center for their spring show: A Many Splendored Spring, before rushing back to Sacramento to bring in art for the latest show at the Twisted Track Gallery: ATELIER AVANT-GARDE.
This week will be my first opportunity to share something about my art work for people at the gallery during the artist’s reception on Saturday, April 11 from 6 to 9pm.
I’m grateful to have these opportunities and it’s a lot of work to meet the expectations.
In November 2025, I wrote about a triptych I made that was in the inaugural art show of the Citrus Heights Arts Council. Much of that story talked about the way art intertwined into my early life both at home and at school.
The Citrus Heights show was a moment for me to celebrate the art work I had been doing since the beginning of 2025.
But I also began to think a lot more about the reasons why I was doing the art in the first place.
It was one of the first few times I had to write an artist’s statement.
I wrote: Brad Lakritz is an artist, educator, media professional, and urban farmer who communicates his ideas through words and images. Brad is a portrait photographer who created tens of thousands of images over the last 50 years. Today, Brad creates portraits of flowers on his organic farm by growing images in the landscape by hand.
My art piece for the Citrus Heights art show was a series of three portraits of yellow roses in a triptych. The roses symbolize many different ideas for me and I recognized, preparing for that show, that I take portraits of flowers that I grow.
That’s what I do.
To understand me, I would need to explain why I take portraits of flowers and why I go to such efforts to create the flowers I photograph.
I was taking flower pictures when I first got started with photography but I quickly began taking portraits of family members and friends, dogs and cats, landscapes and architecture—even myself.
Eventually I spent my entire career as a portrait photographer taking pictures of students, families, and colleagues on the side of everything I got paid to do in education, schools, and media.
How did I get from that to artistic photographs of roses and sunflowers?
This is what I have to talk about on Saturday.
WORLDS COLLIDED AND BABY PIERRE EMERGED
The intertwining of worlds these past two weeks included some old ideas made into a new piece of art.
I scanned some of my archival images in the early 2000s when I was able to use hi-resolution digital scanners to transfer Kodachrome slides and black and white negatives to image files for archival digital printing.
The Twisted Track Gallery exhibition was the first time I submitted images from that group of pictures.
The images were waiting around for me to have time and opportunity to use them in a show.
But the images would not have come out of the archives if I hadn’t been in the Art at City Hall show which connected me with the Citrus Heights Arts Council and their Director, Gigi Rayford.
Gigi invited all the artists to submit work to a new show she was curating.
The show would be at the Twisted Track Gallery and was called ATELIER AVANT-GARDE.
It was the perfect time to bust out archival work and the first image I thought of was Baby Pierre. I had just enough time to get three printed and framed.
Before I knew it, these two had been chosen for the show!
THE ENERGY OF BABY PIERRE
Someone over my shoulder was looking at Baby Pierre during opening night. I turned around to see and he moved to the left side for a look from another angle. I stepped in to ask what made him look at the piece.
Immediately, and very deliberately, he described a series of feelings he received from looking at Baby Pierre and the energy he was getting from the entire image. He even provided details about other places that generated energy for him as he scanned the image.
I wasn’t expecting that amazing response and critique.
The piece generates energy for me as well, so I guess I should not have been so surprised.
I explained the process I used to create the Baby Pierre image. He marveled at the serendipitous nature of photographic processes in the 1970s, and how they influenced the outcome of the final image.
His analysis of my second piece called “Headknocker” was the same. The conditions and lighting influenced the way I captured the photograph. He said it had similar energy to the Baby Pierre image.
He enjoyed the sense of movement and the way the arms appear in multiple places.
I was truly grateful to have met this art lover.
BABY PIERRE WAS ON TV!
The Twisted Track Gallery is part of a group of venues including a bar across the street. During exhibitions the art get’s displayed for people in need of eye candy.
That gave me a great opportunity for a portrait of me!
Love is a rose
But you better not pick it
It only grows when it’s on the vine
A handful of thorns and
You’ll know you’ve missed it
You lose your love
When you say the word “mine”
— Neil Young (Love is a Rose, 1974)
BEING AT THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME
Each day on my small urban farm I go outside and work the land, the plants, and the trees. There are 17 fruit trees, 15 rose bushes, 7 grapevines, six berry plants, a redwood tree, a grand fir, and two redbud trees and a large number of cacti.
I have over 100 sunflower seedlings growing this year.
I always have things to do just to keep the plants happy and growing.
Irrigation repair and expansion, soil management, pest control, plant trimming, seed planting, extra watering, building growing structures for vines and climbing plants, and so on.
I have job security even though I don’t make any money. The whole operation actually costs me money!
But there is tremendous value for me, and I hope for you, because in the end I am able to share some of what I see and experience with people via my writing and my photography.
This is why I do it.
But I also do this because it is real. There are only real ingredients in everything I do. There are no chemicals, no artificial ingredients, only organic and human made ingredients.
I feed them air, sunshine, shade, and water. I talk to them and take their picture. They only receive human and mother nature’s love and support.
I was watering plants the other day when I discovered this beautiful rose called Falstaff.
As I looked closer to take a photograph I noticed a little friend in the darkness of the center of the flower.
So, I coaxed her out for a picture.
I figured, if she lives with me, the spider deserves a portrait too.
That’s what a day is like for me when it comes to growing food and flowers and when it coms to photography and art making.
As Don said about The Portrait of Baby Pierre, the randomness of the spider generates its own energy and impacts everything around it, including my photographs.
BABY PIERRE GREW UP A LONG TIME AGO
I take pictures for many different reasons and I get different types of satisfaction from my photography.
Over the past ten or more years it’s become more about taking pictures of sunflowers and roses than anything else.
Sometimes I just want to text someone a picture with a comment.
Sometimes I want to share an image with my kids and their partners text group.
Sometimes I need a new banner for my SubStack page, my Facebook page or the Lakritz Farm Art page.
And sometimes I get something so good I want to make it into an art piece.
I am very happy to have had Pierre in my life and that I can share some images and stories of how he changed the world.
I took this portrait of my Mom and Brandy and Pierre circa 1988. Baby Pierre had grown up.
“I keep my friends eternally
we leave our tracks in the sound
Some of them are with me now
some of them can’t be found.
It's a long road behind me,
And I miss you now.
If you follow every dream
you might get lost.”
— Neil Young (The Painter, 2005)
Thanks for reading and listening today.
Love the photo and love the context you provide. Congratulations on your exhibitions!