Charming Baker

Charming Baker is a British painter whose work wraps dark humour around themes of childhood innocence, love, mortality and fear. He studied at Central Saint Martins, later returning there to teach, and worked for years as a commercial artist before his personal work broke through after a 2006 show on Brick Lane.

Baker is known for deliberately damaging his own paintings — drilling, cutting and even shooting them — to question how precious art should be. He has been championed by Damien Hirst and collector Frank Cohen, and for the London 2012 Olympics he made the sculpture Triumph in the Face of Absurdity with Sir Paul Smith.