Rushern "Rush" Baker IV[1] (born September 10, 1987) is an American painter and past candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates to represent District 22 in Prince George's County.[2] [3] [4]
Baker was born in Washington, DC on September 10, 1987, to Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker, III and the former Christa Beverly.[5] When he was four years old, his family moved to Cheverly, Maryland. Baker attended Prince George's County public schools and graduated from Suitland High School in Forestville, Maryland. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Cooper Union in 2009 and a Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in painting/printmaking from Yale University in 2012,[6] where he was awarded the Elizabeth Canfield Hicks Award for outstanding achievement in drawing or painting from nature.[7]
After graduating from Yale, Baker moved back to Prince George's County. He is a self-employed artist whose work is greatly influenced by politics, and have been described as being "heavily influenced by author Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturist novels, most notably Parable of the Sower."[8] In a 2013 interview, he said “I want my paintings to generate a discourse around policy, especially foreign policy."[9] Baker's work has appeared in numerous exhibitions in Maryland, DC, New York, Connecticut, California, North Carolina, Dubai, and Japan,[10] and is currently a lecturer at the University of Maryland[11] on drawing and two-dimensional design. Baker previously coordinated a publicly funded mobile arts program for youth. He is a former artist-in-residence at 39th Street Gallery, a part of The Gateway Arts Center in Brentwood, Maryland.[12]
In discussing his most recent exhibition in 2019 at Washington, DC's Hemphill Fine Arts, the reviewing art critic asserted that "Baker’s energetic and frenetic abstractions invoke a range of concerns, from the perils of living while black and the widening income gap to the proliferation of alternative facts and weaponized technology."[13]
In June 2022, Baker took over as campaign manager of his father's gubernatorial campaign after his previous campaign manager, Andrew Mallinoff, stepped down.[14] His father suspended his campaign later that month.[15] In January 2023, Baker filed to run for the nomination to fill the vacancy left by Alonzo T. Washington in District 22 of the Maryland House of Delegates.[16] On February 8, after Washington endorsed Baker's opponent Ashanti Martinez, Baker announced that he would no longer run for the vacancy.[17]
Baker was a delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, pledged to Kamala Harris.[18]