It has been as a figurative painter that this reputation has been established. Baines has become known for fresh and vivid images of life on the beach.
As a Grange resident, he has painted the beach and its visitors in exuberant summer mode – often depicting swimmers in attire of the Art Deco period when lines were sleek and elegant. There are whimsical shades of Norman Rockwell in his work.
But now, as he prepares a new exhibition opening at the Red Dot Gallery in Penny's Hill Winery near Willunga on January 16, it is to surrealism that his mind has turned.
Still largely on his beloved beaches. But now, the people are replaced by chairs which stand and lie somewhat wistfully in the shallows.
Chairs visit stubbled fields, too. A formally dressed man stands in the water, looking out to sea.
And, like a homage to Magritte, he also depicts tie-wearing hats suspended in a cloudy sky.
In this new phase, he explores pieces of landscape melancholia, such as a rusting car in a field.
"Postmodern landscape," Baines says.
His paintings all are clean-lined and precise – which suits well the surrealist themes.
And, although Baines now is known as the summer beach artist, surrealism has dwelt in his mind's eye throughout his painting years and it is a genre to which he returns, rather than begins.
Baines once was a painter of John Martin's backdrops and murals for the Magic Cave. He studied art, but did not finish. While commercial art was a living, it was not a self-realisation and Baines slipped into avant-garde painting with dreams of becoming a new Andy Warhol.
This was not to be. His early surrealism was largely ignored. Since he lived by the beach and had always done so, it was at the suggestion of fellow beach dwellers that he began interpreting the environment he most loved.
He says he had avoided painting the beach because he wanted to be different. The beach was too obvious. But the beach was a hit with the art market and Baines's exhibitions were sellouts.
Swiftly he became known as the artist of Australian summers.
Now he is daring to "break new ground" by bringing a meld of his surrealist heartland to the lyrical seaside which has been his artistic making.
A sneak preview of the new art is on www.andrewbaines.com
