Teresa Baker, The Way It Was ⏤ detail, 2024
Teresa Baker
b. 1985 in Watford City, ND, USA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA
Since living in Texas in the 2010s, Teresa Baker has made mixed-media paintings on cut shapes of artificial turf, a material that has associations both with fabric, weaving, industrial construction material and even, in Baker’s work, with animal pelts. She uniquely transforms this synthetic surface by integrating elements like yarn, willow, and buffalo hide, crafting textured, abstract compositions that evoke expansive landscapes.
Baker’s exploratory work is often rooted in a sense of place – of places remembered, of landscapes and maps. She now lives in Los Angeles, but her work harkens back to other places she has known, particularly the Northern Plains, a vast region of the United States and Canada that touches on parts of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Baker’s forms feel expansive, no matter their scale, as if they are reaching out to encompass a space, or an idea. She combines natural materials such as strips of willow, or pieces of elk or buffalo hide, with artificial substances like yarn and spray-paint. Baker has said that she’s “interested in felt-language of abstraction,” a way of making that is intuitive and led by feeling rather than symbolism.
Installation view, Teresa Baker – Mapping the Territory, Broadway Gallery, New York, 2024
Abstraction is about “bridging gaps,” Baker says. Those gaps may be between herself and the places where she was raised, or where her ancestors lived, or they may be between different sides of her own identity. (Her mother is German-American and her father is Mandan Hidatsa.) Her work also bridges gaps between painting and sculpture, between craft and fine art, between traditional techniques and contemporary assemblage. It fills a space of absence, of mystery and unknowing.
Baker’s work has been widely exhibited, with solo shows at de boer in Los Angeles, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and Halsey McKay in East Hampton. She has participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Hammer Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and Ballroom Marfa. Her contributions to contemporary art have been recognized through prestigious residencies and fellowships, including a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and an artist residency at Fogo Island Arts. She has also been a Native American Fellow at the Ucross Foundation and an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts and MacDowell.
Baker holds a Bachelor of Arts from Fordham University and a Master of Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts. Through her innovative approach, she continues to push the boundaries of abstraction and materiality, offering a distinct perspective on landscape, identity, and artistic tradition.
Teresa Baker, Facing North ⏤ detail, 2024