We are extremely happy to present the 26th solo exhibition of Richard Baker with our gallery. Our personal relationship precedes even our professional one, which began in 1992. Through the years Richard has exhibited oil paintings, sculpture, installations and more, but the core body of work that he has become identified with has been his loving depictions of favorite books. In our current online show, we can travel with Richard through some of his favorite bookstores and browse the piles and shelves alongside with him. This year we are diving deep into some of the classics of English literature and poetry, with titles by Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce, Carson McCullers and others. Of course, a requirement for any of these books is that they have particularly graphic or enticing cover art. Of the two outliers to the poetry and literature themes, one, All About Sound and Ultrasonics, was a book designed by a dear friend of Richard’s as well as ours: Pat de Groot. This book dates from 1961, when she was working as a book designer, before she became one of the most legendary artists/personalities of Provincetown.
The other outlier would be the Queen of Hearts Cookbook (1955 Peter Pauper Press), which continues the thread of his 2021 exhibition, Dining out at Home with Richard Baker.
Richard uses the medium of gouache to paint these exquisite homages. Gouache can be particularly tricky paint to master, but Richard has made it into an almost second-nature intuitive tool with which he honors these jewels of design. It is quite extraordinary to see the way in which he handles the medium almost like oil paint, making it viscous and tactile.
Richard Baker's work is in countless public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Sarasota Springs, NY, and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Awards include those from the New England Foundation for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He has been a visiting artist at The University of Iowa, Boston University, The Rhode Island School of Design, The School of Visual Art in New York, and the Vermont Studio Center, and others. He has long standing involvements with The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, MA where he conducts workshops. Baker taught for eleven years at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. After 25 years in NY, he now resides in Cambridge, MA.
