Richard Gentry Ayer, painter, muralist, printmaker and sculptor, was born in San Bernardino, California on November 23, 1909. He spent his youth in Utah, but moved in 1924 to Fort Bragg, California where he completed high school. He studied at the College of Marin but was largely self-taught in art until the early 1930s, when he enrolled in courses at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute), studying sculpture under Ralph Stackpole. Beginning in 1934 he was invited to assist with various San Francisco WPA Federal Art Projects, among them the Aquatic Park Building (now the Maritime Museum) mural under Hilaire Hiler, the frescos in the Presidio chapel under Victor Arnautoff, and the murals on the Federal Building for the Treasure Island International Exhibition. He was also worked on the WPA easel painting project.

Ayer served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He first worked as a radio operator and then worked "painting grass for a psychotic major" (Smithsonian Archives of American Art, oral interview with Mary McChesney, September 26, 1964). After his discharge, he returned to San Francisco and resumed his studies. Between 1946 and 1948, he enrolled again at the California School of Fine Arts and he studied collage under Jean Varda, sculpture with Zygmund Sazevich, and printmaking with Stanley William Hayter.

Ayer primarily exhibited throughout San Francisco. He was a member of the San Francisco Art Association and exhibited in their annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition in 1939, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1950 and 1954. Ayer's work was also included in the 20^th Annual Exhibition of Northwest Printmakers at the Seattle Art Museum in 1934. A solo exhibition was mounted 1940 at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). In 1950, Ayer had solo exhibitions in San Francisco at Lucien Labaudt Gallery in 1950 and Vesuvio Café in 1954. That same year he also had a solo exhibition at the Glad Hand Restaurant in Sausalito. His work is in the collection of the Maritime Museum in San Francisco.

Richard Gentry Ayer died in San Francisco on August 27, 1967.