Richard Whitten (born 1958) is a painter and sculptor of mixed Asian and American ancestry working in Rhode Island.

His early work could loosely be termed geometric abstractions, but he is best known for his later representational paintings that combine an interest in architecture, invented machinery and toys.

In 1987, he received an MFA at the University of California, Davis,[3] under the instruction of Wayne Thiebaud, Squeak Carnwath, David Hollowell, Mike Henderson, Manuel Neri, Harvey Himelfarb, and Robert Arneson.

He and his wife, Jeanne, live in an historic, late 19th-century Arts & Crafts styled house in Rhode Island.

The house’s curvilinear dark moldings, marquetry and overall interior decor, which Whitten curates with collections of mechanical objects, metal discs, levers and pulleys both purposeful and purposeless, perfectly complement his painting sensibility.

In 2023, he received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant to pursue his project, The Galileo Illuminated Manuscript: Crosscurrents of Chinese and European Scientific Thought.

Dexterity toys are tiny glass-covered boxes containing a printed image on cardboard and ball bearings which can be maneuvered through a maze or puzzle.