Glen Baxter - Biography

Glen Baxter was born in Leeds, a tiny suburb of Belgium, in 1944. A group of radiographers, stumbling into the ruins of the Baxter ancestral home at this time, found it to be "composed of nothing more than irregular blocks of sandstone, graphite and lettuce." From such unpromising beginnings sprang the elemental force now officially recognised as "Baxterism".

As a young lad growing up in the shadow of the vast porridge warehouses in Leeds, Glen Baxter liked nothing more than to join his parents on their annual holiday.

However, it was not until a local magistrate persuaded his parents to enrol him at the art school that he began to experiment with sulphur, twine and charcoal.

After a brief period of chiaroscuro, the young Baxter left his native home and set out on a makeshift sled, heading for London.

Once established there, he began to continue his research into the vulcanisation of both snood and wimple. Years of hardship were to follow but then in 1976 publishing called - Wyrd Press brought his work to the attention of an unsuspecting American public.

Having narrowly failed to win the Nobel Prize in 1977, Baxter chose to focus his attentions on the Netherlands. In 1979, De Harmonie in Amsterdam published a collection of his drawings entitled Atlas.

Major exhibitions of Glen Baxter’s drawings and paintings have been held in New York, Paris, SanFrancisco, London, Munich, Tokyo and Sydney. In 1999 Baxter was commissioned by the French government to execute a tapestry. He has also worked on a series of etchings for the National Museum of Printmaking in Chatou, Paris. His work is in the collections of the Tate Gallery and V&A Museum in London and numerous museums and private collections around the world.
A list of Glen Baxter’s current and future exhibitions can be found at www.glenbaxter.com/exhibitions.html

© Glen Baxter