Lauren Baker Artist Biography
Lauren Baker was born in 1982 and is from the town of Middlesbrough, UK. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is exhibited internationally as well as in the UK. Lauren’s art career began after a life changing trip so South America where she joined a mosaic street art project in Brazil and took part in ceremonies in the Peruvian Amazon jungle. After this inspiring trip, Lauren went on to study mosaic in Venice.
Inspiration for Lauren Baker comes from the vastness of the universe and all its unknown possibilities and environmental sustainability. She then uses meditation to picture what colours goes best with her ideas for her next body of works. Lauren’s visual style is often built around either emitting or reflecting light. Many of her pieces directly reference the frequencies emitted by astronomical bodies, as well as those attributed to plants, human organs and chakras. A sense of mystery and emergence - of connecting with something beyond or much bigger than our own immediate world - pulsates throughout her work.
Lauren’s work explores human connection, metaphysics and the expansiveness of the universe. Her signature neon works portray the power of energy through her poetic typographic and celestial chakra artworks. Passionate about environmental issues and sustainability, Lauren Baker uses light to express the ‘secrets of the universe’ and aims to raise the vibration of love and connection within the world. Recent works visually interpret unseen energy. Lauren listens to sound frequencies and gets in a meditative state to digitally paint auras and energy, she then incorporates diamond dust, neon and kinetic elements to create celestial artworks.
Lauren has been featured in the likes of Vogue, being referred to as ‘the queen of skulls.’ The Tate also declared that ‘Lauren Baker engages people in a unique and atmospheric way. She’s an artist we’ll definitely be watching out for.’
Pat solo shows such as, ‘Transition’ at The Ivy in July 2015 received raving reviews. Fad Magazine described Lauren’s work as ‘stunning pieces’ and ‘a potent and colourful new body of work’ by Art, Antiques, Design.
Lauren is renowned for her work using reflective material which includes the world’s first infinity mirror coffin at Tate Britain, a 7-ft mirrored geometric ‘Portal to another dimension’ commissioned by Clerkenwell Design Week and 100 mirror eyes attached to 50-ft trees in the forest at Unknown Festival, Croatia.
Following the success of her workshop and skull art installation at the Tate Modern in July 2012, Lauren Baker was invited by Tate Britain to host a large-scale interactive installation in which she turned part of Tate Britain into a forest to set the scene for the world’s first infinity mirror coffin as part of her modern deconstruction of John Everett Millais ‘Ophelia’ painting.
Her most intricate work, which sold for £420,000 to an influential sheikh in Qatar In February in 2015, is a Steinway grand piano encrusted with half a million crystals. In 2014, The Crystal Tigress; a sculpted life-size tiger head encrusted with 52,000 crystals, which toured Asia and was endorsed by Jimmy Choo and Jaime Winstone, fetched £30,000 at the tiger conservation charity auction for Save Wild Tigers.
Additionally, Lauren curated THRIVE, an exhibition of 20 contemporary artists which exhibited at the Sanderson, London and auctioned in aid of Save Wild Tigers at the Mango Tree tiger dinner, London, May 2014. The events were a success and raised £62,000. Funds went to the Born Free Foundation and the Environmental Investigation Agency.