Michelle Baker is an artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores creativity as a practice of inquiry, transformation, and human connection. Through painting, photography, writing, performance, and expressive arts, she invites reflection on the relationship between embodiment, imagination, and meaning. Her large, abstract, expressive paintings, often spanning multiple canvases, are held in private collections. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Asheville, North Carolina.

Her practice has evolved through a distinctive lineage of philosophical inquiry, artistic training, and contemplative study. She began at St. John's College, where the seminar method and close reading of the Great Books cultivated a lifelong habit of inquiry that continues to shape her creative practice. She later studied photography, sculpture, Medieval Renaissance art history, and Italian at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy, and pursued painting under the private tutelage of Santa Fe artist, Helene Pfeffer, before earning a Master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling—another step in her exploration of creativity, perception, and what it means to be fully human.

Baker's interdisciplinary practice has been deeply influenced by the Halprin Life/Art Process®. At the Tamalpa Institute, she studied within the artistic lineage of Anna Halprin and Daria Halprin, training with Anna Halprin, Daria Halprin, G. Hoffman Soto, and Ken Otter. She has performed with Anna Halprin's Sea Ranch Collective and collaborated with improvisational performance artist Ruth Zaporah. Her contemplative practice has likewise been shaped through years of study with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, integrating mindfulness with artistic expression.

As a writer, Baker is the author of The Canoe and of the original play Sole Survivors, which she performed at Artomatic in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, New York City's Women at Work Festival—where she was invited back for three additional performances—and in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she collaborated with Mariachi Buenaventura and the 2017 Latin Grammy Award-winning ensemble Flor de Toloache.

Across disciplines, Baker explores creativity as a way of meeting uncertainty with presence, curiosity, and compassion. Through painting, performance, writing, and expressive arts, she investigates how beauty and meaning emerge through disruption, inviting others to experience life's turning points as openings for imagination, connection, and transformation. While she maintains a private counseling practice integrating expressive arts and mindfulness, she understands this work as an extension of her broader artistic practice—another way of accompanying others in creative inquiry and transformation.