Richard Baker is a British painter whose quiet, intimate oil paintings explore the hidden histories of everyday objects. Working primarily with mid-century furniture, clothing and other familiar items, he isolates his subjects from their original surroundings, allowing them to suggest the lives, memories and experiences of the people who once used them.

Baker works from found photographs, gradually building his paintings through thin layers and glazes of oil paint, which are repeatedly drawn into, wiped away and reworked. His modestly scaled compositions are characterised by a sense of stillness and absence, with much of their meaning left deliberately unresolved.

Born in Hull in 1971, Baker studied Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University before completing an MA in Creative Practice at Leeds Arts University.

His work was selected for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2018, and he won the Hix Award in 2019 and the Wells Art Contemporary Patron’s Prize in 2020.