The incredibly talented Claire Baker and Chris Dunn are back on the Trail in 2019 and we can’t wait to see what wonderful work they have created since the last Trail two years ago!
Claire revisits the memories and emotions associated with vintage ceramics, using press moulding and hand building techniques. With a huge love for the Victorian costume, theatre and fairytales, Claire’s art has a hint of gothic and wicked playfulness. Victorian costume influences the design and texture of her ceramics.
Claire has recently begun to stitch paper into collages that can be made into 3D objects and her love of music boxes has also been adapted into this new layer of work.
Claire can be found at her ceramics studio or at her paper studio that looks like a scene from a Dicken’s novel. Claire describes art as having changed her life – “a mid-life crisis led me back to college and taking my Degree in Ceramics when I was 40, it changed my life, gave me the career I dreamed of and satisfies my need to make”.
Chris works primarily in watercolour, with the aim of creating detailed and atmospheric illustrations, “the type I used to pore over as a child”. Chris’ first major inspiration, and the man who made him aware of illustration as a career, was John Howe – “everybody, whether they know it or not, has at some point seen his artwork, either on book covers, board games or in every single Peter Jackson Tolkien film”.
After stumbling across a Tolkien calendar illustrated by Howe, Chris started to use watercolour and began copying John’s paintings, Chris further describes Howe’s influence as, “even when, during my foundation year, I had a hiatus from watercolour in favour of oils (because watercolour is so hard), it was John Howe who brought me back into the light and I picked up watercolour again determined to crack it”.
Chris has an exhibition planned for 2020 at Galerie Daniel Maghen in Paris. Chris hopes to launch a French and English edition of ‘The Wind In The Willows’ and an artbook illustrated by him at the preview.
