Martin Baldock

Born in Kent in 1948 I had a pretty good childhood living in a council house on the outskirts of Maidstone, with lots of open countryside and woodlands to get lost in with my pals.  Looking back, I sort of drifted through my school years with no real idea what I wanted to do with my life in terms of a job.  I've always loved music, reading, and making art more than anything.  I didn't like school very much, it sort of interfered with everything else as far as I was concerned. After flunking my "O" levels, I tried to get into art school very briefly, Rochester Art School, because it was only a bus ride away from home.  No-one told me it was a graphic design school, and I was ill-prepared for the interview.  It was the sixties, there were many diversions, so-called "youth culture" was exploding all over the place, and jobs were plentiful.  

To cut a long story short, I got a job, I met a girl, we got married, bought a house, had a family, they grew up, we downsized, I retired and we now live in Oundle.  

Along the way, outside "thedayjob", and when family time permitted, I pursued my love of music and other creative passions. From the moment we bought our first house I always had a space in which to be creative, and I took evening classes, attended workshops wherever we lived at the time.  From Maidstone Art College, to Kings Lynn College, and Kings Lynn Art Centre.  While we were in Norfolk I joined the West Norfolk Artists Association and exhibited in their shows, the annual Eastern Open, and even had a piece shown in Kettles Yard in Cambridge.

Once settled in Oundle, I eventually made contact with the creative community in Corby, just as they had acquired the former library building that eventually became the Rooftop Arts Centre, where I nabbed myself one of the first studios built there in 2012.  Out of that has come my present career as a full time creative, now working from Studio 3 in Rooftop Arts which is now in the centre of Corby.

My work has evolved over the years and is inspired by nature, music, and life in general. The artists I admire are those who recognised that photography was very good at capturing a likeness, so for them, the priority had to be an emotional, expressive response to subjects.  My works on paper or canvas often begin with a gesture, or a form, a selection of colours. I also like to allow the medium to do something of its own as I work, particularly in watercolour, or pastel, acrylic, to pause working as they blend and flow until dried, for example. Hence most of my work has abstract qualities, and I like to think the work provides something to meditate on.
Occasionally I will work with found objects, to create constructions, or installations.
The other stream of my output involves sound, music, and the moving image, either separately or in combination.