Teresa Baker was born in 1977 in Alice Springs hospital. Her mother Kay Baker is a Pitjantjatjara woman from Kanpi and her father a Pitjantjatjara man from Yalata. Teresa spent much of her youth with her grandfather Jimmy Baker, learning about the country and the sacred stories associated with it. Today she works full-time at Murputja school and is passing on the knowledge she learned to the next generation.
She continues her teacher training with annual courses and cares for 5 children, still finding time to paint in school holidays and evenings. While Teresa’s paintings have qualities reminiscent of her late grandfather Jimmy Baker (her teacher and mentor), she has found her own individual way of mark-making and using iconography. Like her grandfather, she utilises the power of negative space, which paired with her own self-taught understanding of nuance in the use of colour, create dramatic effects in her paintings.
