la vie d'artiste

I was born in Hunslet, a tiny suburb of Leeds. Both my parents were working so I was sent to the local nursery. At the end of my first term there, the teachers held an open day to celebrate the activities of the children. My parents came along to the event and noticed 3 large tables filled with lots of tiny clay figures. “Which of these did our son Glen make?” asked my mother “These 2 tables” replied the teacher. Warning bells were clearly sounding… I carried on at school although these were difficult times. I had a stammer and my parents were worried it would affect my school work. I remember one day my mother sent me off the local shops to buy a collar stud for my father’s shirt. I was very nervous and as I set off to walk to the shops I began rehearsing my speech, trying various combinations of “Good Morning, I’d like to buy a collar stud please.” Finally, I arrived at the entrance to the shop, and marched bravely in. The shop assistant stared at me from behind the counter. I managed to speak without a trace of a stammer. The assistant looked at me in total astonishment after a long pause he said “I think you might like to try the shop next door”. I turned to exit and then realized I was standing in a furniture shop. I had been focussing so much on making my speech I had gone into the wrong shop. I had said the correct words, but in the wrong place. A few years later, when I went to art school I discovered the work of André Breton. He was describing surrealism and that’s when I realized I was already a surrealist at the age of 16. I spent 5 years at art school and became fascinated by the paintings of Giorgio di Chirico and the collage novels of Max Ernst. At this time the art school was mainly focussed on abstraction and much of the work was a pastiche of American abstract expressionism. I was much more intrigued by Dada & surrealism and Erik Satie’s notion of an artist’s life. I seemed I was the right person in the wrong place. I left art school, disillusioned and moved to live & work in London, where I began to write prose poems & make small drawings. In 1974 I was invited by the American poets Larry Fagin & Ron Padgett to read my works at the Poetry Project in New York. I stood before an audience at the legendary venue-St. Mark’s Church on the Lower East Side and I read my works. The reaction was totally enthusiastic. I was in heaven. The American writer and Oulipo Member, Harry Matthews came up to congratulate me. Later that year I had my first exhibition of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart Gallery. Somehow I had managed to combine images and words in a way that was definitely English though owes a great debt to the spirit of European surrealism. Glen Baxter 2022