Christopher Baker is one of the finest landscape painters of his generation and is magnificently equipped to tackle the changing drama of this land.Throughout a long career his love of subject has been matched by a relentless determination to discover a consistent quality of newness in his understanding of the natural environment. He is not a repeatist artist, indeed, there is a skill and freshness in the way he handles his subjects which is truly mesmeric. The paintings always work on two levels. They have a strong narrative and at the same time a powerful aesthetic appeal. It is a measure of his work that you do not need to look for clever phrases to respond to it. He articulates his vision so precisely his method of doing so is at one with his love of subject and profound spiritual engagement. His audience sense that his pictures are right. Here is honesty and truth. They have all stood on a mountain top or rocky headland with wind and spray in their face reveling in the joy of existence. Professor David Carpanini August 2016. Painter NEAC PPRE RWA Hon RWS RCA Hon RBSA University of Warwick A painting is not merely a record of a landscape, it is a record ofan experience of a landscape born of the union of artist and subject. It cannot be separated from its twin source. During the creative moment artist and subject are inextricably linked; both are mirrored in the painting. To view a painting as an object, as somehow separate from the artist, is to miss its power. For art is not only decorative, it is transformative. It changes those who gaze upon it and allow themselves to feel that dynamic that embraced both the artist and subject. When we gaze upon these paintings we see a vision born of the world of snow and ice ; and we enter into the very birth of this impulse. And that will allow us for this moment of true attention tobecome part of that extraordinary world. And feel something which we have never before encountered. Michael Baigent Author:The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail In some sense what Christopher has helped me to understand in my own approach to film-making, is to articulate these things that are hidden, what goes unsaid. How one fragment of British coastline can encompass both sublime transcendence and gentle melancholy in two separate paintings. In his use of colour you can see how by actually, as he says in the film, limiting the use of blue in ‘Looking east from Oliver’s Battery’, “the other colours become the blues, so that they exist in relationship to the other colours and take on a blueness”. It’s this subtlety and finding different ways to express the unsayable, which I respond to so strongly in Christopher Baker’s work. Joanna Hogg Writer-Director February 2011 Unrelated (2006), Archipelago (2009), Exhibition (2015) Reviews Flying Colours Solo Show Pallant house Solo Show Ultima Thule. Paintings from the Arctic.
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