Claire Baxter’s Beautiful Worlds Of Art
Andrew Liddle talks to a Harrogate lass voted one of the Most Popular Published Artists.
![Hikes, Hills and Hobnobs]()
Hikes, Hills and Hobnobs
Welcome to the wonderful worlds, of Claire Baxter, the Knaresborough-born artist with a nationwide following. Yes, there are two of them, actually, both heart-warming.
Firstly, Yorkshire, which as we all know is a wonderful world in itself. These pictures are visually stunning, a joyous feast for the senses but quite unlike anything encountered in conventional landscape art. “People tell me they’re unique,” she says, contemplating the secret of their appeal, “a real crossover between photorealism and something purely out of my imagination.”
![Claire Baxter]()
Claire Baxter
Each scene frames a little drama played out by interesting characters who just seem to leap out of the scene, endearing themselves to us with their clothes and postures.
Sometimes they are intriguingly at odds with the idyllic background. None seems more out of place than the girl in a red miniskirt and matching stilettos surveying Rombalds Moor from the Cow and Calf. “How did she get up there?” Claire wonders aloud. She should know; she dreamed them up.
![Waiting for a lift]()
Waiting for a lift
You’d think there’s a romantic story behind the sharply dressed lady waiting outside one of the few remaining red telephone boxes in Harrogate. Is she waiting for him to arrive in Montpellier Muse or to ring her? If its tender romance you want, take a look at the man and the maiden walking among the heather into a pink twilight in Forever Moor.
Claire studied Fashion at Salford University and the art of dress is clearly important to her. Her womenfolk are done up to the nines as often as not, sometimes dressed for the kill like the scarlet lady in Going With the Flow, who we find sauntering on the banks of the Ouse towards York’s Lendl Bridge. What is going through her mind we often wonder because she appears in other scenes, always alone. The men by contrast have a tendency to old-fashioned garb, flat caps and belt and bracers, like the three cyclists freewheeling down Pateley Bridge High Street in Lads On Tour. Maybe it’s a Yorkshire thing! Certainly the humour in many of her paintings is of the dry northern sort and relies on affectionate stereotypes.
![Ducking and Diving]()
Ducking and Diving
Many of her most memorable characters are innocently riding a wave of happiness, dreaming their private dreams under a warm summer sun or beneath the quiet stars. We soon find ourselves wrapped up in their story wherever it’s taking place, be it a warm embrace on Knaresborough station, a family day on the beach at Bridlington, or young Calendar Girls balanced on a five-bar gate, overlooking the Wharfe at Burnsall.
You’ll find there’s not many of the county’s iconic places that Claire has not visited and transformed into a narrative in oils. “As a commercial artist I always feel I need to do more than just celebrate our glorious landscape,” she explains. “I try to create a snapshot of a story in a single image.”
![Middnight Train]()
Middnight Train
The other world, which has its own devoted collectors throughput the country, has but two characters, the loveable George and Daphne. “They are a quirky little Yorkshire couple,” she says. “Some think they’re children, but it’s impossible really to pin down their age because we don’t see their faces. They are the same in every picture although their wardrobe changes quite a bit.” Cute, droll and innocent, they inhabit a bright poster-paint never-neverland, bedecked with love hearts. They drink tea and adore farmyard animals. Their appeal is entirely sentimental and grounded in a gently off-kilter humour.
All Claire’s work provides a rich visual escapism that people find enormously attractive - so much so that the last time it was conducted by the Fine Art Trade Guild she was one of the 5 finalists in the online vote to find 'The Most Popular Published Artist’. Prestige indeed bearing in mind the calibre of previous winners like Jack Vettriano, Beryl Cook and Alistair Colley! It’s hardly surprising to learn she has a three-year waiting list for commissions. Her annual calendars which contains 12 freshly-painted scenes, each reflecting a monthly mood, are sold out in January and the waiting list for the next kicks off each June.
![Three Fat Rascals]()
Three Fat Rascals
The best places to appreciate her work at close hand and to buy giclee prints and postcards of her best sellers are her two galleries, in Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge. They all come with witty titles like everybody’s favourite 3 Fat Rascals, featuring three windswept Harrogate ladies making their way to Betty’s Café, beneath a red brolly - or the Tyke couple in Yorkshire Tea with their fortifying Thermos flask – and the Fine Fillies at York races, three ladies de rigeur for the members’ enclosure! All great fun.
She drops in one day a week to each gallery and spends the rest of the time in her studio at home in Harrogate, where she lives with husband, Andy, and children Millie and Archie, all equally sypportive. “It’s good to get out and meet customers and hear what they have to say and see what they spend their time looking longest at!”
![Waiting for a lift]()
Waiting for a lift
Sometimes you can catch her at her easel. “I only work on small pieces in the galleries, because of lack of space, but the techniques are the same.” She paints on board, which has been treated with a matt white Gesso primer. She sketches in pencil on paper from a series of drawingsand photographs to produce an outline. The next stage is more technical. “I manipulate my sketch onto the computer which is the modern equivalent of using tracing paper in the old days,” she laughs. “Eventually, I have the nicely balanced image which step-by-step I’ll transfer to the board.” Although working in oils, she favours acrylic brushes for the softer touch they bring to a painting.
After all the underpainting, the exquisite landscape can finally be layered on, the thick vibrant colours built up and last of all she will add the characters, no easy task. “The difficulty is in making them part of the landscape not floating above it. I have to locate their right height, get them in perspective, make them part of the scene.” Her backgrounds are from life, the only difference being she will remove double yellow lines and bollards from town scenes.
![Claire Baxter outside her shop]()
Claire Baxter outside her shop
It’s good of her to frankly explain these issues that we are blissfully unaware of when falling under each picture’s spell, and amazing to discover someone with such mastery of her craft considers herself to be self-taught. Although her talent was always recognised in her schooldays spent at St Mary’s, Knaresbrough, and St John Fisher’s, Harrogate, and she took a
B.Tech., in Art at the local college, she opted to take a degree in fashion at university. For the next four years after graduating, she worked in retail, notably managing the Costa Coffee branch in Harrogate.
Eventually, she decided she needed to find a route back to, art, her first love. It was while teaching at Brigshaw High School, Kippax, near Leeds, that she believes she learned on the job. “Some of the GCSE and ‘A’-Level Art students were amazing and certainly kept me on my toes. Working with them, showing them how to improve their technique certainly sharpened mine. I loved teaching. It was a hundred per cent brilliant.”
Her time in retail is credited with planting the germ of an idea to open her own gallery, after a good many years on the Yorkshire art trail, selling at exhibitions and fairs. The way her paintings were being snapped up gave her the confidence to leave the steady and very enjoyable teaching job and become a full-time commercial artist.
“I was aware it might be a bit of a gamble, but it was something I really wanted to do. The first night in the gallery I cashed up in the way I used to do in the coffee shop.” She smiles broadly. “The wheel had turned full circle and everything had fallen into place.”
![Cake Crusaders]()
Cake Crusaders
She’s not looked back since. In fact, it’s been onward and upward all the way with her stories in oils. You don’t so much scroll through her online gallery(
https://clairebaxterfineart.co.uk/# ) as stroll through beautiful landscapes – representing the two worlds of Claire Baxter’s rich imagination.
![Still Waiting for a Hogwarts Letter]()
Still Waiting for a Hogwarts Letter