Christine Baxter
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Christine comes from a family of artists and craftspeople. Her great, great, grandfather was a wrought iron gate maker, her grandfather was a woodcarver who trained at Kensington School of art, her mother studied fashion design, her father was a landscape designer and gardener. Making and drawing is in her bones.
Christine has always derived great pleasure from drawing and the fist time she encountered clay I never looked back.
Christine completed her art foundation at Cambridge college of Technology under the inspiring tutorage of the sculptor Mike Gilespie, Epsteins former assistant.
She then studied at Camberwell in the early 80’s when they still taught all the basic figurative skills.
Christine had a few years working for the film and model making industry, mostly making consumer products for Disney, Warner’s, Lucas Films and many others, until Christine could afford to set up my own studio and just pursue her own work.
Christine’s work is predominantly figurative and representational, but the representation is the vehicle. What she am exploring and investigating is the emotional response of the viewer. This is her concept. Whilst making a piece she is consciously trying to understand the emotions that she is having to it. Hoping for a similar dialogue and emotional response from the viewer.
Once you have the physicality of the clay and the likeness of the model in hand then it becomes interesting. How we all read instinctively the angle of the mouth the tension in the brow, the eyes, … tiny manipulations can create different emotions in the viewer. Not only are you dealing with weight and gravity, and tension and poise and fluidity and solidity, but the language of the body. The best figurative work has this ability to affect the viewer emotionally. It is successful if it gets you in the guts!
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