Reviews
Robert Baker’s electronic flicker paintings are about the shimmering, depthless surface of the television screen or computer monitor, about the substitution of the limitless possibilities of electronic simulation for the given, intractable, concrete reality of the visual environment.
– Aidan Dunne, Visual Arts Correspondent, The Irish Times, reporting on the exhibition ‘Death by Geography’
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Robert Baker’s small paintings are subtle and luscious, beautifully finished with a careful balance of colour. They contain an expansive form within their smallness, lending power to their effect. Some visual quotations in the paintings indicate that they are about art (sometimes Velasquez and John Walker) but they make their references lightly, self-contained and elegant.
– Gill Hedley, previously Director of the Contemporary Art Society, London.
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In Robert Baker’s shifting shuttling abstracts the speed of the stroke coincides with the speed of his thought.
– Aidan Dunne, Irish Times Visual Arts Correspondent
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Robert Baker often uses a large central rectangular motif which has imposed on it a grid in square or line. Across this are various complementing colours which push and shove in an abstract mosaic, breaking the symmetry. The whole sits against a flat background. Where once there was a storm now there is calm. How space and perspective function in a painting is a consideration for Baker. He occasionally adjusts the central shape minimally within the picture plane. This sets up a simple dynamic between object and space which acts as a positive tension between the painting surface and the viewer.
– Samuel Walsh, Visual Arts Correspondent, The Sunday Times
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Robert Baker Paintings 