A self-taught autistic artist finally finds his way to success and conveys the positive spirits through his artwork
A famous pencil artist from Splott has brought his hyper-real portraitures into the Christmas Market in central Cardiff during recent weeks.
Chris Baker, a 24-year-old autistic artist, uses pencils to draw people from movies and TV shows as well as people who inspire him. He started to show his special talent when he drew his first realistic portrait of Will Smith.
“These people inspired him to get better at what he does because they were the best,” said his father, Stewart Baker. “Especially Michel Jackson, his personal charm and music style has a great influence on Chris.
“It took Chris 160 hours to finish the portraiture for Michel Jackson and he finally got the opportunity to meet Jackson’s brothers and shared his painting with them.”
“He says ‘we are his favorite group’, ” said Jackson’s on stage in Cardiff. “After I saw his drawing today, he is my favorite artist.”
Chris has already created personal drawings for many of the world’s top players and has been showcased on ITV News.
Last year Chris was nominated for The Positive Role Model Award at The Welsh Diversity Awards as an inspirational person and he made the last round.
“Every negative has a positive,” said Chris. “We never see autism as a negative, but lots of other people do. So we want to show people just because you have autism or something like this, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful.”
Chris drew these paintings in negative, but if you use the digital device to access the hidden image, it changes to the positive one and that is the message of “Every negative has a positive.”
In 2018 he was invited by The National Autistic Society and his drawings are on display in the charity.
Chris also became the patron of The Autism Directory, which is an organization helping families and individuals find autism-related resources in local areas.