How a new studio is feeding the city's art ecosystem

Every corner has its ancient good. Every corner has its due, its mention.

Then, in a kind of torn away gesture, she looks up to the paintings, giving them a wide sweep with her arm, like a thick brush stroke.

The walls are laden with them. Contemporary pieces that colour the beige in daring washes of colour. And, although there is the occasional portrait or landscape, the vibe is distinctly mid-century modern, more abstract chic.

Then Baird heads to another room. A small study and studio stacked with canvases - she is an artist herself, after all. Some is her own work, some friends, some confidantes.

And finally, once you've toured the limbs, you're guided to the living room -often the home's heart - and she drably points to the north-facing window: a vista view of Launceston, the Tamar River and its valley.

The landscape in the living room, drenched in golden-hour light, is an afterthought. For Baird, the tour has been in descending order of importance: her great love is the antique; the second passion, paintings.

It's a shame she's getting rid of almost all of them.

Baird - who had a storied, successful career as the former owner and founder of George Street art dealership Gallery Pejean, which is now Madeline Gordon Gallery - is selling her antiques as part of a new venture.

One she said signifies her "stepping back into the art world".

She calls it Back Room Studios, and it's a fusion of her two passions: contemporary art and Asian antiques. It's an unexpected direction for an art dealer who, by most measures, had effectively retired from the game.

"When I left Gallery Pejean, I had the intention of getting back into my own art, making my own pieces again," Baird said.

"But it didn't pan out like that and now I'm coming back to what I know: selling art."

At first it was just the antiques she'd acquired over a lifetime that she wanted to sell, but soon, artists she'd formed relationships with at Pejean started ringing - like Debra O'Regan, Marilyn Patton and John Gill - wanting her to represent them.

"These people trust you; you have their careers in your hands," Baird said.

"They kind of dragged me back in."

But Back Room won't only be selling, it will be exhibiting, though not in a permanent gallery space like Baird had on Charles Street with Pejean. Instead, works will be showing at different locations; Baird will be more an exhibition facilitator than a gallerist.

One of the studio's first shows will be Calm, an exhibition of works from the artist David Lake, an esteemed Longford painter in the lineage of Jeffrey Smart and Edward Hopper.

Baird cuts an interesting figure in the city's art ecosystem, having, in one sense, "reshaped" it when she arrived from Sydney.

With Gallery Pejean, Baird was the major channel for a melange of the city's artists to exhibit their work. Before she arrived, there was no commercial gallery space in the city - a surprise for her when she landed.

"When I was a kid, Tasmania was the Apple Isle; then as I got older, I heard it was the Arts Isle," she said.

"I expected a pub on every corner and an art gallery on every other. And it wasn't like that."

With Gallery Pejean now in new hands, Back Rooms could almost be seen as Baird's way of changing Launceston's art scene into the one she thought she'd find. Back Rooms sits neatly among other up-and-coming and established galleries and dealers, like Green Oaks and Sawtooth ARI.

But as a new commercial avenue, it's unique. And though it doesn't have a permanent exhibition space in Launceston yet, it signifies a growth in the sector and Launceston's art ecosystem. One which ends in more exhibitions and more space for artists to view work, or to purchase it.

Maybe, on the next tour Baird gives of her home, she'll start with the big window and the vista of the city spread out above the river. The dealer will diligently point to the streets where, on every corner, another gallery has been painted on the Art Isle.