Rebecca Hardaker
Contemporary painter creating large scale, tactile compositions rooted in surrealist automatism and instinctive gesture.
Rebecca Hardaker’s paintings unfold through instinct rather than design. Working without preparatory drawings, she allows thought to move freely across the canvas, building layered compositions where figures, florals and fragments of lived experience surface and dissolve.
Influenced by André Breton’s writings on psychic automatism, Hardaker approaches painting as an immediate translation of the subconscious. Her palette is bold and heightened, her surfaces dense and worked. Marks are not erased but absorbed, creating paintings that feel alive and unresolved in the most compelling sense.
Scaled to meet the body, her canvases carry both psychological intensity and physical presence. They do not sit passively within a room. They anchor it.
Available Work
Working directly with her hands, Hardaker applies and removes layers of pigment, combing colour into textured passages that create movement and rhythm across the surface. Floral motifs and gestural lines rise with urgency, guiding the eye through compositions that balance spontaneity with control. The physical act of making remains visible, giving each work a visceral immediacy.
Born in Yorkshire and now based in London, Hardaker studied Classical Studies at the University of Manchester before completing an MA in Heritage Management at the University of Birmingham. She has exhibited widely across the UK, including a solo presentation at Fitzrovia Gallery, and was selected as Director’s Pick at The Other Art Fair in 2022.
Her paintings bring scale, conviction and emotional depth to contemporary interiors, offering collectors works that are both conceptually grounded and visually commanding.
Interested in available works or commissions?
Oil on canvas
160 x 170cm
unframed
by Rebecca Hardaker