TERESA IS KNOWN FOR HER DYNAMIC COMPOSITIONS, DEVELOPING A DISTINCTLY UNIQUE WAY OF PAINTING THE EPIC TRAVAILS OF MALILU, THE ARTIST’S HEROINE ANCESTOR.

Teresa Baker is a Pitjantjatjara artist who works with the Tjungu Palya Art Centre in Nyapari Community, in the far north west of South Australia. She has notable artistic lineage, being from the renowned Baker family of Kanpi, including her grandfather, the late prominent law man and artist Jimmy Baker (who began painting in his 80s) and her mother, Kay Baker, also a respected artist from the Tjungu Palya art centre.

Teresa spent much of her childhood with her grandfather, Jimmy, learning about country and Tjukurpa. However, while her paintings have qualities reminiscent of her grandfather Jimmy Baker, she has developed her own distinctive visual vocabulary and iconography to depict the ancestral stories associated with her country.

Teresa Baker first exhibited in 2007 and held her first solo exhibition at Vivien Anderson Gallery in 2015. She has been selected as a finalist for a number of important art awards including the Kate Challis RAKA Award at the University of Melbourne, and the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin. Her work was met with broad critical acclaim when she was featured in the 2017 exhibition Painting, More Painting at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne, and her paintings are included in the collections of the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, Monash University, Museum of Art, Melbourne and ArtBank, Sydney, amongst others.