He seems to have attended very little formal schooling and was self-taught as an artist, but his father, a house painter by trade, gave him encouragement. He was raised in South Africa during the apartheid era. The government’s strategy of forced removals, which involved the relocation of thousands of families to different places on the basis of racial segregation, targeted the suburb where he was born. A family that was relocated included Baker’s. Working as a sign writer in the Cape docks was one of his previous documented jobs; it’s likely that this environment provided him with some of the ideas for the subjects he painted. Throughout his life, he held solo and group exhibitions and experienced some degree of fame, although his art was only sold for comparatively little money.