Biography

Pitjantjatjara, b. 1977 Teresa Baker is a Pitjantjatjara artist from Kanpi in the APY Lands of South Australia. Born in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), she spent much of her childhood with her grandfather, the senior law man and artist Jimmy Baker, learning Country and Tjukurpa. Her mother, Kaye Baker, is also an artist. Teresa began painting under her grandfather’s guidance in 2005 and works through Tjungu Palya Art Centre at Nyapari. Country: Minyma Malilu Teresa is particularly known for painting Minyma Malilu, an ancestral woman whose story and journey are held within her family’s Country. She also paints Kalaya Tjukurpa. These stories were passed to Teresa by her grandfather and connect her work to the cultural knowledge, landscape and significant places surrounding Kanpi and Watarru. Style and Technique Teresa’s paintings are layered, expansive and rhythmically constructed. Irregular fields of dots, segmented forms and repeated marks gather and overlap across the canvas, creating shifting areas of density and open space. Her compositions hold both the physical presence of Country and the complexity of Tjukurpa through movement, repetition and scale. Teresa’s Palette Teresa works with a broad and often high-contrast palette. Black, white and earth-based tones sit alongside saturated reds, pinks, yellows, greens and blues. Colours appear in layered fields and loosely defined forms, giving her paintings a strong sense of depth, energy and movement. For the Collector Teresa Baker's work was included in Painting and More Painting at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2016 and Ngura Puḻka – Epic Country at the National Gallery of Australia in 2026. She was a finalist in the 2013 Kate Challis RAKA Award and the 2017 Wynne Prize, and a joint finalist with Clarise Tunkin in the 2016 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Her work is held in the Monash University and Artbank collections.