John Baldwin's early influences were the work of American artists including Jackson Pollock. As Baldwin says, "I like the idea of action painting because it is what it says, the action of painting." Following his studies at Leeds College of Art John worked in the rock business in London. This included designing record covers in a studio shared with the infamous Oz magazine at a time when they were busted for obscenity. After a period of teaching, manufacturing, designing and, even a stab at pottery, Baldwin took up portrait painting. What followed was a kind of epiphany: “I was living in the Lake District working as a gardener in a very nice spot overlooking Lake Windermere. It was a beautiful day and I was working on rhododenderons and I realised I was thinking about nothing but painting. I thought, ‘If I stand a chance [as an artist] I have to start immediately and I might get somewhere. If I even leave it another year I’ll be past it.” John Baldwin's artistic statement.
"It’s a kind of Abstract Expressionist idea that through the use of the medium the meaning comes, the solution is in the material. "I had this belief, somehow, that I had to understand how to use paint – I wanted to know how to paint rather than what to paint. I ended up making my own paint to develop the medium to my own colour sensibilities using the very latest pigments that were available. “There are two ideas going on: one is the act of painting and the other is controlled accident, serendipity, chaos theory. But the uncontrolled: I think life is unmanageable and I think painting is too. So I set up a series of experiments and then just control the end results. But there’s always this element of the uncontrolled, so it’s a system of dynamic forces that one sets up and, ultimately in which one is not completely in control.” North Street Gallery, Leeds, presents new work by John Baldwin until Saturday 14 May 2005. | 
