Charming Baker: 'All This is Yours'

Charming Baker lives and work in London, although he was born in Hampshire 1964. He spent much of his early life travelling around the world following his father, a Commando in the British Army. At the age of 12, he and his family finally settled in Ripon, North Yorkshire. Baker left school at 16 and worked various manual jobs and in 1985, having gone back to college, he was accepted onto a course at the prestigious Central Saint Martin’s, where he later returned as a lecturer. After graduating, Baker worked for many years as a commercial artist as well as developing his personal work. Baker has also exhibited with the Fine Art Society, collaborated with Sir Paul Smith for a sculpture entitled ‘Triumph in the Face of Absurdity’ which was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, continues to be committed to creating work to raise money for many charities and has recently been commissioned to be a presenter on The Art Show. His work is in many international collections.

Although Baker has produced sculptural pieces in a wide and varied choice of materials as well as many large-scale and detailed drawings, he remains primarily a painter with an interest in narrative and an understanding of the tradition of painting. Known to purposefully damage his work by drilling, cutting and even shooting it, Baker intentionally puts in to question the preciousness of art and the definition of its beauty, adding to the emotive charge of the work he produces. Indeed Edward Lucie-Smith has described Baker’s paintings as having, “something more, a kind of romantic melancholy that is very British. And sometimes the melancholy turns out to have sharp claws. The pictures make you sit up and examine your conscience.”