The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Richard Baker. The exhibition marks his third with the gallery. It will comprise small to large paintings of still lifes, many of them set before Cape Cod and Long Island landscapes. The paintings are populated with flowers—often tulips, books, old magazines, and photographs of family members and some well-known faces, carefully arranged across tabletops.
Although Baker's paintings are born out of keen observation and maintain fidelity to the objects at hand, he often upends the picture by ignoring traditional perspective, tilting the table toward the viewer. The objects defy gravity and remain in place. As a result the still life elements often appear to float, part of the pictorial space and yet part of another. This gives his work a surreal quality that is rarely associated with still life painting today
Richard Baker has exhibited widely throughout the United States. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and the New England Foundation for the Arts Grant.