Daily Life Ltd

ALT Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me. One of 711 drawings made between 1997-2008 when I was part of the mental health system. Here’s Day 579 - it shows my head and shoulders. I am looking slightly downwards and my expression is peaceful and happy. The inside of my head is painted like the inside of cathedral – with a beautiful high ceiling and huge stained-glass windows. The floor has black and white checked tiles – there are brown wood pews leading down to the door each side of an aisle. The aisle leads down to my chin, which is a carved wooden door - steps lead out to a path and my shoulders - which is the green grass in the graveyard. The cathedral is empty apart from a small figure in a pulpit – which is me preaching to myself. I look very happy, which I was gradually becoming by then. My tilted cathedral head is held up on both sides by a row of pale brown figures – to represent the buttresses of a cathedral. I thought of them as the buttresses of academia

ALT Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me. Day 12. In 1997 I referred myself to a mental health day centre in London, near where I lived, meaning to go there for 3 weeks and sort myself out. There was a lovely art room, I always wanted to try out water colour painting so I made a rule to do a drawing a day every day I was there. It actually took me 11 years to get myself sorted, make sense of what caused my anguish and change my life. During that 11 years I made 711 drawings. That was a long timer ago – art saved my life. Here’s day 12 – it shows my face, with my short messy hair and long chin. I look sad and bewildered. I have 2 mouths not one, which I needed then. One to tell everyone I was fine, one for crying. © Bobby Baker 2009

ALT Pull Yourself Together. Artist Bobby Baker, wearing her trademark white long-sleeved overall – she is sitting strapped into a car seat. The car seat is bolted onto the back of an open flat-bed truck. She is 50 years old, with short brown hair with blond highlights. She is wearing jeans and red camper shoes, with brown socks showing. She has her legs crossed and is laughing. She is holding a megaphone in her left hand with the speaker in her right hand close to her mouth. The truck is stuck in traffic in Trafalgar Square – and directly behind her is a London Double decker red bus showing an advert for GAP JEANS in large red capital letters. Along the side of the truck, across the lower part of the image there is a white banner attached to the side of the truck reading in big red letters PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER This project was a commission from Live Art Development for Small Acts for the Millennium in 2000 and was made during