Scott Baker, born 1975 in Rugby, Warwickshire.

 

"I'm a writer and poet by calling and have written in earnest since 2000.  I've self-published a couple of works in small runs and had other pieces in vanity publishings, but never made it into printed word under my own name, nor been taken seriously by anyone.  I've read poetry around the UK and overseas, recorded two albums, and have started to self-record all my work as time allows. Poetry at this rate of return does not pay the bills, and would barely buy a decent meal...

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An outsider artist and poet, this is my personal archive. I recorded two albums, both available here, and wrote a number of unpublished manuscripts, which in due course I intend to fully record and document also. Writing chose me going into the millennium and I dedicated every breathing moment to it for a crippling 13 years. It is a crime I have never been noted or published, save for occasional small circulation vanity projects. I tempered my soul in a howling fire pit and only a handful of people noticed or cared. Whatever sketchy cast the world had assigned to me, I broke, and leaked hope from every pore. I believe I wanted salvation back when, but of course my distress signals would find no person onshore to receive them. Beyond repair, and with no good foundations on which to part-build, I tore down and remade myself, a random patchwork of a man, drawn from ashes, rubble and dust. These poems are just notes I made along the way.

 

So after another breakdown - my first in '02, this one coming in '11, - I was encouraged in therapy to use art as means of creative expression.  We had a magnolia tree in the garden that blotted out a lot of sky, so we cut it down, and on instigation of a friend who was into it, I began whittling wood from the twigs and offcuts.  I was into tribal art, prehistoric, primitive art, and all forms that countered the western classical obsession.  I filled the shelves with all sorts of scrappy creations.  This led to brutalist sculpture that incorporated found objects, toys, and any throwaway rubbish I found in the shed/charity shops/car boot sales/on the floor in the street/etc.  A massive influence and inspiration was to discover the work of Thornton Dial Sr. who gave me a visual language to work from.

 

3D artworks merged with 2D canvases, which started bulging with driftwood, toys, electrical parts, metal, vintage ephemera, wool, wire, plastic - any old gubbins really.  My guiding mantra was "Do it wrong".  Everything rejected, I use, which is so apt to this site.  (Incidentally the two pieces above were rejected from a gallery in Rugby in 2017.)

 

I eventually listed art on Ebay and was surprised to find people liked it and I've sent work to the north of Scotland, the Isles of Scilly and everywhere in between, and across the world, the furthest afield being New Zealand.

 

A few years back I trained with a taxidermist to learn the process and have since added that string to my bow.  I love the work of Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter, and use modern themes to create similar anthropomorphic scenes and dioramas with rodents and small critters.  These occasionally blur into absurdist or brutalist artworks too.  Everything I make now I showcase on Instagram.

 

I don't bother with commissions.  I'm too uncompromising and do whatever I like; I'm uninterested in someone else's vision.  If you want that, ask them.  Guess that's why I'm completely overlooked by the establishment, but why dilute yourself for likes?  You can't force-grow an oak tree.  Organic is the preferred method.  If people are looking, they'll find it"

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-Scott Baker