Bio

Teresa Selbee-Baker is a representational painter based on Savary Island, a very remote community of British Columbia. Working in oil on cradled wood panels and paper, she builds paintings from portraits, florals, landscapes, and geometric form, layering these elements into a single visual language rooted in bold colour and personal history.

Her work begins with her own photographs and family pictures, collaged together until a composition emerges. Wood panels are prepared with clear gesso so the grain stays visible beneath the paint, connecting the work to place, to the forests where she grew up and the island where she lives. Thin layers of oil are built up slowly, each one transparent enough that what came before remains present.

The women in her paintings moved through industries that were not built for them as though it simply was, without announcement or apology, a generation or two before the world had language for what they were doing, all while managing families and households. Selbee-Baker is interested in what it means to inherit that kind of quiet defiance without knowing you have. Her paintings investigate the stories women carry across generations, not the stories that are written down or openly told, but those passed down through gesture, resilience, and instinct.

Selbee-Baker holds a BFA in painting and photography from Thompson Rivers University, completed in 2006, and is an active member of the Rise and Repaint Network, an international collective of women and non-binary artists. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows across British Columbia and in Chicago, and has appeared in Artist Talk Magazine, Suboart Magazine, Art Seen Magazine, and Women United Magazine. She has been interviewed on CBC Radio's North by Northwest and completed a 2025 residency with Atelier Artist in Residence.