Martin Kinnear

Martin Kinnear is a contemporary painter and guest lecturer at the Royal College of Art, and the 2026-29 Kossoff Scholar at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Born in Burnley in 1969, he lives and works in London and North Norfolk.

Trained at the Royal College of Art, he approaches painting as a temporal and investigative act, where meaning emerges through revision, resistance and the physical behaviour of materials. His current work focuses on British modernism and the conditions through which making itself becomes a form of knowledge.

His paintings are held in the UK Government Art Collection and in museum and private collections, and he received the Medaille d'Argent at the Paris Salon in 2018. He writes on painting and has published widely in Artists and Illustrators, The Artist and Leisure Painter.