Jake Baddeley

“Jake Baddeley is one of the most exceptional artists in the contemporary symbolism genre. His work is an evocative mix of the mystical, the profound and the absurd. It is classical yet surreal, contemporary yet historical. Jake Baddeley combines a masterful technique with provocative imagery in which he invites the viewer into a strange and magical world of his own. The major themes that run through his work are a sense of longing, a melancholy humour and a sensual exploration of the female form.”

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 There are Two lights. One that lights the room, and the one in your head. I paint the latter one. My paintings are lit by the light of imagination, the real light.

The places I visit in my work are a product of my dreams, that are also bathed in this light. It is an emotional light, that can convey a feeling, a mood or an idea. It is the light of nostalgia, of a distant memory, the light of the magical garden of childhood.

An image may come to me completed, can I hold it in my head, finish the painting before it fades? I don’t like to ask too many questions, to edit or filter. If I do, I am always left with just dust in my hands, or a less interesting painting.

I listen to the still voice within, the intuition, for guidance. The thinking I leave to the viewer. Meaning, might sometimes be wanting, or reason obscure, but there is often a power, a luminosity in a successful work that resists all clarification. I would never exchange that for the most carefully composed idea.

In 1996 he has his first solo exhibition. This exhibition is, much to his own surprise, such a success that it offers him the opportunity to paint on a full time base. Ever since he has had successful solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and his work has found it’s way into many private and corporate collections.

Jake draws his inspirations from many sources: the Ancient Greeks, the Italian Renaissance Masters, the Dutch Masters, iconography, mythology, psychology and philosophy. But most of all he relies on his own subconscious and intuition which has proven many times to have a logic and curious independence of its own.