TIM BAKER

I will admit I was reticent to show this work as unlike the other pre-degree work it’s less technically able, and it’s most definitely the work of a child – because I was! When I was a young teenager I was moving around because of my parent’s divorce – hence Shropshire where my mother lived for a few years, then back to the Surrey/Hampshire border with my Dad where I grew up, after moving there as a child from Manchester.

Ironic given all that upheaval, holidays were the one constant – my mother sometimes taking me to Greece and my Dad to Cornwall and Devon. And I drew them all at the time, upto about the age of 18 so these date to around my G.C.S.E. most likely 14-18 as I remember some of this was possibly schoolwork but definitely not submitted for G.C.S.E. coursework.

The reason I am showing this is in part why I blog here, to show my progress, not all of it good, and there are some nice pieces.if not as polished as I would do now, or shortly later – you can contrast this with the A-level time Shropshire Book or the Foundation work where I learned to be less uptight about my drawing. I have a LOT of Foundation work actually – not sure you need to see it all, but I might post the highlights.

Now I said previously that I hadn’t done seascapes before, and I thought this to be 100% true – til I saw this old work back from storage and realised I used to paint seascapes as a kid in Cornwall! It had completely been lost to the mists of time until I saw these pieces. You might notice a few things: no watercolour – yes I used to use System 3 acrylic exclusively, even on nice Daler Langston paper. I didn’t get any proper Cotman watercolours until A level or Foundation, but I seemingly didn’t use them much.

Also pencil lines – yes, a bit like now I drew the lines first and then ‘coloured them in’ but I dont use pencil anymore, so that’s exclusive to these. And the fact the colour pencil drawings are almost identical to ways I drew during my Foundation or later on in Greece. These were my beloved Caran D’ache pencils which were a big Xmas or birthday gift as they weren’t cheap – first a 20 set then a bigger 40 set, Prismalo I at first then Prismalo II. There seems little difference between the different Prismalos – I still have them. I find them too hard now, and take a tidal wave of water to actually get any watercolour wash out of them!

In fact one of these drawings I know roughly when and where it was done – it was drawn during a stay in the cottage at Kynance Cove in Cornwall, in fact on the end of the Lizard – yes until the bloody National Trust closed it down – then did their own version, you could stay at the cottage next to the shop on the cove itself. The arguments were the same as beauty spot near where I lived, that the incumbent shop was ‘causing environmental damage’ but then they install their own shop selling tat from China, so it’s no better. With the difference that no-one lives there now, so no-one is keeping an eye on the Cove.

A large ‘superwave’ deluged me when paddling and took my glasses away at the Cove, so I spent the rest of the holiday basically blind. So the blurry nature of the drawing, which became a style of mine is because of that.

I guess I did a few pieces in Cornwall before I lost my glasses!

The next few pieces are in part a mystery or incomplete. The first I do remember, it was supposed to be a present for a friend (I guess Christmas present given the date?), combining various photographs I took of him and his goat (yes his parents had a goat). These looked horrible, but I liked the house so cut out the portraits and left that. Slightly leaning house though…

The next is I think a ruined mine, so most likely Cornwall, but the style and use of pen says more likely to be Ironbridge or a later work. That and the next were amongst the same Ironbridge papers so likely to be part of the ‘Shropshire Book’ but I’m not sure. I didn’t complete this landscape, but it feels earlier, but likely Hebden Bridge – we toured around that area visiting a Mensa moot as my mother was a Mensan – or Shropshire.

Again not exact dates, I’d have to go through my old photographs and hope the dates were stamped on the back (very likely I photographed this scene to finish later), but between 14-16 for the former and 16/17 for the latter. I really was amazed at the ruin one, again not a style I really did til later, pen and paint. The opaque part shouts acrylic though, not watercolour.

The oil pastel of Porthmellon is one of the ones like the Harbour above which I suspect is either again Porthmellon or Mevagissey in Cornwall, one that I slightly cringe posting. I was very proud of it as a 16 year old – to be honest I thought it was 14/15 by the level but I dated this one, and my Dad was also. To my later embarassment he hung it in the hallway and showed it to visitors.

Still kind of proud of it, but I can see the problems now but I love the colour (I had a massive oil pastel set with every colour imaginable and you can see my turquoise fetish forming) and I like the waves and the repeating bollards. But those wonky windows! I seemed to struggle with vanishing points and windows, I did for a long time, it’s why I draw a lot of tranverse? oblique angles and buildings even now. And really at age 16 I should’ve been more technically better…

Next one seems later – as it’s in pen, probably not the 1989 trip to Kynance Cove, Cornwall but could be. I didn’t really start drawing with my trusty Berol Green Pen til at least A-level or Foundation. This feels like a later piece given the looseness and similarity to the later Shropshire Book drawings which are definitely 1991 or 1992, Foundation but pre-degree.

I’d be proud of this drawing now, it’s brilliantly expressive, and given I was experimenting with looser expressive drawings during my Foundation after the horror show that was my A-level of endless still lives which I will not bore you with and being endlessly told that my drawing wasn’t ‘accurate’ or confident enough, it’s nice to see my natural style re-assert itself here. And for all it’s looseness, it’s actually quite ordered and accurate.

And finally to one of the first pieces I did that I felt was thoroughly successful – a place I knew well down in Whitmoor Vale on the Surrey/Hampshire border. You might recognise the characteristic ‘hangers’ – banks with trees on and and bowl shaped paths from the nearby Hambledon pieces. It’s very distinctive part of this area.

Whitmoor Vale is a valley, and the trees give off shadows like this in the evening, and I suspect I did this completely plein air, or maybe finished the shadows it at home. I’m guessing a summer evening, and the shadows weren’t entirely intentional, they got that long cos it took so long to paint.

At the time I was doing plein air pieces like this for school, but this wasn’t a G.C.S.E. piece, no tag and no mark on it. Just for me.

(I would like to point out at the time I didn’t know the work of John Nash (or indeed his brother Paul Nash) and the related ‘rural modernist’ 1920’s-30’s artists with their dramatic deep shadows. It was thus a total shock when I first saw one of his pieces….)