By MIke Baldwin

As a kid, I did well in art class.

I got attention. I liked attention, so I drew some more.

Other subjects sometimes got in the way. Things like spelling, history, science, you know – the fluff stuff.

The report cards that followed me home were laced with poison:

" Michael needs to pay more attention. Likes to clown around in class. Needs to apply himself more. Will never amount to much. Should be serving time, not wasting mine."

In grade six, class clowning nearly got me "the strap."

I plea bargained it down to "writing out pages of the dictionary" – a punishment usually handed out to naughty girls, which I claimed was sexist and unfair. They bought it. I should've been a lawyer.

That saved me from "the strap," and also kept my parents out of it, because the school would call home before they strapped a kid and if my parents found out, well…let's not go there.

Where was I? Oh yea …

It wasn't until grade seven that I got it, and started to focus. Another kid and I took Pineland School by storm in terms of art and drawing. Danny and me.  Danny drew well too, and we both became known the school’s art guys.

This was about the time I would drive my bike to my grandfather’s farm to mow the lawn. He suffered a heart attack a few years earlier and needed the help. I needed the pocket money and loved getting away for the weekend and having him all to myself. Grampa Harry had a wicked dry sense of humour.

He took up oil painting when he left the hospital and did about a dozen paintings in what he called his "Grandma Moses"  period.  He quit cold turkey one day and handed me his art supplies.

That was my first big break.

Sable brushes, tubes of colour, pencils, charcoal sticks and linseed oil. Nothing could stop me. And nothing would.

Basically, I’m self-taught. That can be a good thing and/or a bad thing. Takes longer when you're both student and teacher, but it keeps costs down. And I hardly ever yell at myself or give myself "the strap."

OK, let's move on…

In  high school I did pretty good. Probably because I was steered into the four-year he-ain't-university-material tech program. I was getting great marks and my classmates in auto shop wanted to kill me because   I was making 'em look bad.

I think that is when I learned that humour could get you out of a headlock.  In addition to 'fight or flight' I also had the 'funny' response. Humour saved my skin more than once.

Ironically, I wasn’t able to take any art classes until grade 11, when they loosened the rules.  That’s the make-Baldwin’s- life-as-miserable-as-possible rule that seemed to be in place at the time.

I drew, painted and sculpted my way through two more years of this with the help of some wonderful art teachers, Mary Craigmile, Bob Mason, and Mr Felix, my sculpture teacher.

After high school I found a full-time commercial “arty” job at Sears in their display department.

I was able to use art and cartooning in displays, signage.

I also took college art courses during the five years I worked at Sears completing a plastics and fine arts certificate. I took a number of life drawing classes with the talented artist, Walter Hickling. I'm sure some of the nude models inspired  characters in Cornered. My love of drawing the  human form blossomed.

While working at Sears I also drew cartoons for The Burlington Gazette beginning with a weekly panel called "Peepal." That lead to my next panel called "Aunt Alas". Shortly after I was asked to be the Gazette’s  editorial cartoonist.

The Sears display work lead to a position at their head office in Toronto, designing and illustrating displays for a monthly book that went out across the chain. That led to a position at The Hamilton Spectator as an ad designer.

A few years later I created another panel called “Pokus” which ran weekly in The Hamilton Spectator.

In 1986 I left advertising and joined the newly launched Burlington Spectator editorial department as art director and one-man art department. Along with designing pages and drawing charts, graphics, and illustrations, I was asked to do a weekly cartoon for the Editorial Page. I did it until 1991 when I joined The Hamilton Spectator.

Cornered first  appeared on April 1st. 1996 in The Hamilton Spectator and a few other papers owned by the Southam Newspaper Group. After a year, it was running in 10 dailies.

Cornered joined Universal Press Syndicate in 1997 and it began running in papers across the US, Canada and several other countries.

A dozen years later and Cornered has traveled places I’ve never even heard of. Should've paid  attention in geography class.

It’s humbling, my bit of wit is sort of a hit,  he says, wiping away the spit.

I took an interesting path to get to here. It's all been good – working, learning and surrounding myself with fun, talented, creative people.

I love art and humour and try my best to honor that in my work and how I approach life, he says, immediately realizing how puffy, overblown and self-important it sounds.

Art is a passion. You do it because you have too. It's stopping that's… no, wait … still too much.

“My first big break was from Roy Wilson, Editor of the Burlington Gazette. He bought and ran my first panel cartoon called PeePal in the early 70’s.”

Rob Austin gave Cornered it’s big break.

He was Editor of The Hamilton Spectator.

I was the paper’s art director and we were doing a major redesign the summer of 1995.

I suggested a ‘small daily smile’ cartoon that would run on the corner of the front page by the weather icons & briefs.

He said, come up with something that makes me laugh out loud and works in a one column format – in colour, and I’ll consider it.”

Cornered began running 6 months later .  After a few months Cornered was running daily in ten more newspapers across Canada.

It was time to nail down a syndicate deal. My first choice, Universal Press Syndicate, gave Cornered it’s biggest break the fall of 1997.

I’m grateful to those who helped by offering an encouraging word, or made me ‘try harder’  – as well as the support I received from many newspaper editors who continue to share Cornered with their readers.

Cornered © 2013 Mike Baldwin All rights reserved. No part of this site may be used without written permission.