Richard Baker

Richard Baker’s landscapes depict, with evocative clarity, autumn creeping along the curve of a mountain or light playing upon the French Broad River or Fraser firs like soldiers in formation on a hillside tree farm.

“The beauty of the Western North Carolina mountains cradles me,” Baker says. “It feels like home. Standing on a ridgeline and seeing the beauty of the mountains in the distance or up close, the earth stands still for me. I am grounded here. I hope that my passion for these mountains shows in my artwork.” Self-taught, his influences range from the Barbizon School to the California Impressionists. But it is the Hudson River School and its attendant Luminist style of the latter half of the 1800s that most distinctly informs his work. Among those artists who have inspired him are Sanford Robinson Gifford, Frederic Edwin Church, and Edgar Payne. Baker says he paints the Southern Appalachian Mountains in the Hudson River School style. 

“Driving around … Haywood County, every place I see is inspiring,” he says. “Different times of day, different light, different seasons. Every hour, the mountains have a special beauty to them, constantly changing, constantly inspiring me to paint it.”