Baird’s work combines imagination and observation, and he draws on a range of ideas and influences, including real life experiences and visual metaphors. ‘Simple Complex Drawings’ is a series of works that the artist began six years ago, which also formed the basis for his book of the same name. The series contains many of his visual metaphors, often with a nudge towards surrealist based landscape. Influenced by abstract works, Baird creates varied and fantastical subject matter ranging from submarines, wellington boots and galleons to caravans, pumpkins and sails holding up the sky. He describes his work as “a retrospective diary. It is part invention and part imagination… Some of it is carefully observed, but there’s a freedom within it – I can include whatever I want. It is the space where people can live in book houses, ships can sail across dry land and their sails hold up the sky.”