Jared Baxter is a business developer and independent researcher living on the outskirts of the Portland, Oregon sprawl in rural Washougal, Washington. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah he was educated in Manchester, England and Davidson College, North Carolina.
Over the last three years, his research has focused on Vincent van Gogh, in particular, how Vincent’s enduring embrace of Christianity manifested itself in his later life and artwork. Contending van Gogh painted a uniquely innovative Last Supper, he presented Van Gogh’s Last Supper: Decoding the Apotheosis in Symbolist Easter Eggs in Brighton, England at IAFOR’s 2013 European Conference on Arts and Humanities. The paper was subsequently published in the January, 2014 Art History Supplement and the July, 2014 Anistoriton Journal of History, Archaeology and Art History. Offering insight into how van Gogh viewed Symbolist art, in September, 2014 he presented Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox: Vincent van Gogh’s Ideation of the Artist’s Plight and Destiny in Providence, Rhode Island at IAFOR’s North American Conference on Arts and Humanities. The paper was distilled and published as an article in Eye Magazine’s Winter, 2014 issue. Very much a product of the IAFOR Conference series, he credits these symposia with helping him find his voice in the academic community. With three more papers on the go, offering new insights into Quay with Sand Barges, The Red Vineyard and Portrait of Dr. Gachet, he is completing a nonfiction narrative, Discovering van Gogh: Vincent’s Last Supper.