Adam Baker (Ipswich, UK) is a London-based artist working predominantly in oil painting. After studying at Parsons Paris, The New School, in 2011, he completed his BA at Wimbledon College of Art in 2018. His practice centres on intimate, imagined snapshots of queer life and love, drawing on personal experience to build fictionalised narratives that speak to the emotional complexity of contemporary queer identity.
In his current work, Baker creates figurative oil paintings on textured gesso and marble-dust surfaces, using saturated, multi-layered colour to evoke the emotional textures of closeness, longing and desire. This process is cathartic, bridging the space between past experiences and the imagined possibility of a paradisiacal future. His earlier involvement in the London cabaret scene continues to shape his approach, introducing a performative, theatrical sensibility that informs both composition and gesture.
Baker often investigates the contradictions of connection: how queer spaces can feel electric with possibility yet, simultaneously, deeply isolating. His paintings examine different forms of intimacy: encounters that lead to dead ends, moments of unexpected tenderness, and relationships that offer deeper fulfilment. Through merging figures, geometric structures and atmospheric environments, he subverts traditional depictions of masculinity, revealing the vulnerability, strength and fluidity inherent within queer relationships.
Ultimately, Baker’s practice is an exploration of how intimacy, identity and memory intersect.