ABOUT ME
Neil Lawson Baker – Sculptor
8th November, 1938 – 1st October, 2022
This website tells you a little about me and I hope you can enjoy some of the stories and videos about my work.
If you want to find out more, please look on the menu at the articles and the London Live TV interview, which is fun and informative.
From 1957 onwards, I was trained at Guys Hospital to be skilful as a London-based Dental Surgeon. I also read a degree in Medicine and Surgery at St Georges; certainly the long way round for any Sculptor to learn Anatomy!
Dentistry is definitely an art form as well as a science. While practising dentistry, I developed my passion for art, visiting galleries and acquiring contemporary art. I became really interested in Rodin and his school as well as later, more contemporary schools.
A Chance Meeting…
My love of art was significantly enhanced by a chance meeting with Adrien Maeght. I had entered the Paris – Nice vintage car rally in 1970 and Adrien was the organiser. Through Adrien, I received invitations to visit the Galerie Maeght in Rue du Bac in Paris and later the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence to see works by Picasso, Miró, Léger, Calder, Arp and many others. All these works had a huge influence over me and my artistic eye.
Neil Lawson Baker – from Dentist to Sculptor
My appreciation of the arts is wide ranging and the progression from Dental Surgery to Sculpture after over 40 years in practice, in a massively busy London practice, was, I found, really surprisingly easy.
I am now immersed in ‘The Arts’!
Learning to Sculpt
When I started sculpting, I was lucky enough to gain great experience very quickly. My eye-hand co-ordination was naturally very developed as a surgeon, but it was helped immeasurably by a lesson from Kees Verkade in 1987 who showed me how to model properly in wax.
Extraordinary Exposure
About the same time, I met Eric Gibbard at the Burleighfield foundry as well. He became my friend and mentor, taking me to meet Charles Pinellis at the famous Susse-Fondeurs foundry in Arcueil. Eric and Burleighfield had done work for the Tate Gallery, Elizabeth Frink, Philip Jackson and Oscar Nemon as well as casting every Barbara Hepworth bronze after 1952.
So, I found myself working as a sculptor in the presence of great names like Frink and Chadwick who both cast with me at Burleighfield. Nicky St Phalle was often alongside me at Haligon, who did many of my early aggrandisements in Paris. And it is through these experiences that I have progressed and so much enjoyed making work for governments, corporations and collectors alike.
Dame Elisabeth Frink
Niki de St Phalle
It was an honour that Susse Fondeurs cast for me in Paris…
‘My’ foundry team at Susse Fondeurs!
Susse Freres was set up as a fine art foundry in 1804, but is now sadly gone. They are extremely highly regarded in the antique world, producing the very highest quality castings available. They branched out to produce casings and ornaments for the finest French clocks and maquette-sized castings for collectors. Art-deco maquettes by Susse Fondeurs are very highly sought after. They also became known for their daguerrotypes – an early form of photography. Here is an advertisement for the foundry and a title page from an early catalogue of theirs.
…and that Rhodia Dufet Bourdelle displayed my work, ‘STERLING’ in the Musée Bourdelle
The Musée Bourdelle
‘Sterling’
…and I have worked with some of the best known UK foundries, Pangolin, Morris Singer, Castle, Burleighfield and Talos, all of whom have been a pleasure to be associated with.
I am very grateful for the direction in which life has taken me. Now I would love you to enjoy looking at, and hopefully owning, some of my work. I can’t stop designing and creating it and I work endlessly at new pieces and love to take commissions.
The Gibran Sculpture Series
In 1972, I went to visit the birthplace of Kahlil Gibran in the village of Bsharri in Lebanon and the famous Gibran Museum. I have been fascinated by him, his drawings, his creativity and his philosophy from that day to this.
I have created several sculptures by way of a tribute to him over the years, all based on his poems in The Prophet, published in 1923. A selection of them can be seen here.
Neil Lawson Baker – Sculptor and Painter
As a painter…
I ‘dabbled’ as a painter when I was a teenager, but rather let it drop once I left school. In 2003, I took it up again and started painting prolifically. Painting has taken something of a back seat recently simply, because sculpting has re-emerged through Gibran, but you will find a selection of my paintings shown elsewhere on the website, many of which are for sale and I am always very happy to undertake commissions. The work is almost exclusively abstract, and I have tended to prefer vibrant colours, using watercolour, acrylic and Conté.
Outside the Studio
When I’m not sculpting, I have many other interests. As a young man, I played saxophone in a swing band, raced classic cars and competed in three-day events. From a teenager I have always dabbled in painting and drawing and the advent of digital photography led me to high resolution photography as a fine art form. I’m particularly proud of my shots of Venice, Buenos Aires and London.
I have tried to contribute to the furtherance of art outside my studio too. In 2006, I was appointed to the board of The Arts Club in London and in 2007, I was appointed chairman of the Trustees of the Chichester Art Trust, which managed and staged the National Open Art Competition and its exhibitions both in Chichester and in London.
In 2016, I started writing children’s stories. They are fun, fictional stories about a veterinary surgeon hired by a queen on a faraway planet to look after the animals in her zoo and led to my opening a not-for-profit online safari park to encourage childrens’ creativity and to make them aware of the plight of Endangered Species. The planet is called Bowdleflodeland and the inhabitants are known as The Bowdleflodes and you can find out all about them here.
I completed my role as Chairman of the Chichester Art Trust and National Open Art in 2018.
At work in the foundry on Tête en Famille
The Sussex Stone Circle
Part of my studios.
Text or call: +44 (0) 7802 896073
I very much look forward to hearing from you, or even seeing you, at my Chichester Sculpture Gallery.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGES IN THE SCULPTURE LIBRARY TO SEE VIDEOS
ABOUT ME
Neil Lawson Baker – Sculptor
8th November, 1938 – 1st October, 2022
This website tells you a little about me and I hope you can enjoy some of the stories and videos about my work.
If you want to find out more, please look on the menu at the articles and the London Live TV interview, which is fun and informative.
From 1957 onwards, I was trained at Guys Hospital to be skilful as a London-based Dental Surgeon. I also read a degree in Medicine and Surgery at St Georges; certainly the long way round for any Sculptor to learn Anatomy!
Dentistry is definitely an art form as well as a science. While practising dentistry, I developed my passion for art, visiting galleries and acquiring contemporary art. I became really interested in Rodin and his school as well as later, more contemporary schools.
Neil Lawson Baker – from Dentist to Sculptor
My love of art was significantly enhanced by a chance meeting with Adrien Maeght. I had entered the Paris – Nice vintage car rally in 1970 and Adrien was the organiser. Through Adrien, I received invitations to visit the Galerie Maeght in Rue du Bac in Paris and later the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence to see works by Picasso, Miró, Léger, Calder, Arp and many others. All these works had a huge influence over me and my artistic eye.
My appreciation of the arts is wide ranging and the progression from Dental Surgery to Sculpture after over 40 years in practice, in a massively busy London practice, was, I found, really surprisingly easy.
I am now immersed in ‘The Arts’!
Learning to Sculpt
When I started sculpting, I was lucky enough to gain great experience very quickly. My eye-hand co-ordination was naturally very developed as a surgeon, but it was helped immeasurably by a lesson from Kees Verkade in 1987 who showed me how to model properly in wax.
Extraordinary Exposure
About the same time, I met Eric Gibbard at the Burleighfield foundry as well. He became my friend and mentor, taking me to meet Charles Pinellis at the famous Susse-Fondeurs foundry in Arcueil. Eric and Burleighfield had done work for the Tate Gallery, Elizabeth Frink, Philip Jackson and Oscar Nemon as well as casting every Barbara Hepworth bronze after 1952.
So, I found myself working as a sculptor in the presence of great names like Frink and Chadwick who both cast with me at Burleighfield. Nicky St Phalle was often alongside me at Haligon, who did many of my early aggrandisements in Paris. And it is through these experiences that I have progressed and so much enjoyed making work for governments, corporations and collectors alike.
Dame Elisabeth Frink
Niki de St Phalle
It was an honour that Susse Fondeurs cast for me in Paris…
‘My’ foundry team at Susse Fondeurs!
Susse Freres was set up as a fine art foundry in 1804, but is now sadly gone. They are extremely highly regarded in the antique world, producing the very highest quality castings available. They branched out to produce casings and ornaments for the finest French clocks and maquette-sized castings for collectors. Art-deco maquettes by Susse Fondeurs are very highly sought after. They also became known for their daguerrotypes – an early form of photography. Here is an advertisement for the foundry and a title page from an early catalogue of theirs.
and that Rhodia Dufet Bourdelle displayed my work, ‘STERLING’ in the Musée Bourdelle
The Musée Bourdelle
‘Sterling’
…and I have worked with some of the best known UK foundries, Pangolin, Morris Singer, Castle, Burleighfield and Talos, all of whom have been a pleasure to be associated with.
I am very grateful for the direction in which life has taken me. Now I would love you to enjoy looking at, and hopefully owning, some of my work. I can’t stop designing and creating it and I work endlessly at new pieces and love to take commissions.
The Gibran Sculpture Series
In 1980, I went to visit the birthplace of Kahlil Gibran in the village of Bsharri in Lebanon and the famous Gibran Museum. I have been fascinated by him, his drawings, his creativity and his philosophy from that day to this.
I have created several sculptures by way of a tribute to him over the years, all based on his poems in The Prophet, published in 1923. A selection of them can be seen here.
Neil Lawson Baker – Sculptor and Painter
As a painter…
I ‘dabbled’ as a painter when I was a teenager, but rather let it drop once I left school. In 2003, I took it up again and started painting prolifically. Painting has taken something of a back seat recently simply, because sculpting has re-emerged through Gibran, but you will find a selection of my paintings shown elsewhere on the website, many of which are for sale and I am always very happy to undertake commissions. The work is almost exclusively abstract, and I have tended to prefer vibrant colours, using watercolour, acrylic and Conté.
Outside the Studio
When I’m not sculpting, I have many other interests. As a young man, I played saxophone in a swing band, raced classic cars and competed in three-day events. From a teenager I have always dabbled in painting and drawing and the advent of digital photography led me to high resolution photography as a fine art form. I’m particularly proud of my shots of Venice, Buenos Aires and London.
I have tried to contribute to the furtherance of art outside my studio too. In 2006, I was appointed to the board of The Arts Club in London and in 2007, I was appointed chairman of the Trustees of the Chichester Art Trust, which managed and staged the National Open Art Competition and its exhibitions both in Chichester and in London.
In 2016, I started writing children’s stories. They are fun, fictional stories about a veterinary surgeon hired by a queen on a faraway planet to look after the animals in her zoo and led to my opening a not-for-profit online safari park to encourage childrens’ creativity and to make them aware of the plight of Endangered Species. The planet is called Bowdleflodeland and the inhabitants are known as The Bowdleflodes and you can find out all about them here.
I completed my role as Chairman of the Chichester Art Trust and National Open Art in 2018.
At work in the foundry on Tête en Famille
The Sussex Stone Circle
Part of my studios.
Text or call: +44 (0) 7802 896073
I very much look forward to hearing from you at my Chichester Sculpture Gallery.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGES IN THE SCULPTURE LIBRARY TO SEE VIDEOS