Teresa Baksa

 Teresa Baksa: A Pictorial Biography

Early Years

Beginnings

Teresa (Welch) Baksa was born in Boston. She grew up 20 miles northwest of Boston in the town of Acton, located in an area best described as historically rich in the American Revolutionary War and its heroes, and for the intellectual and spiritual influence of the 19th century American Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott. In the towns of this area there are many monuments dedicated to these great rebels and thinkers of the past, along with main roads and important buildings that bear their names. It is an area of total immersion in the roots of American democracy and America’s first significant philosophical movement. There is a palpable sense of the significance of things.

Walden Pond, where Thoreau was inspired to write his masterpiece, “Walden,” was also where Teresa took swimming lessons as a child.

At age 12, Teresa started oil painting with artist Mary Meyers in Boxborough, MA. During high school, she continued to draw and paint, and participated in a Saturday program for high school students at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where she was introduced to life drawing. In 1974, she won the Acton-Boxborough Regional High School Art Award, receiving H.W. Janson's History of Art as a prize. This book became valuable to her, deepening her interest in western art and reinforcing her desire to pursue painting as a career.

Art School/Influences

Teresa discovered a vibrant world of creativity at Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, MA (now Montserrat College of Art). The founder, Joseph Jeswald, designed the school after the Academie Julian in Paris, where he studied with the cubist painter Fernand Leger. Montserrat's four-year studio program, free from academic pressures, was ideal for Teresa. She enjoyed drawing, painting, printmaking, and clay modeling daily, which was both intense work and a dream come true.

The Figure/Ideas

The faculty of working artists at Montserrat was excellent and diverse. After the first-year foundation program in studio art, students chose teachers who significantly shaped their artistic style. For Teresa, the biggest influence was Joseph Jeswald (1927-2009). Jeswald was a dedicated figure painter, an insightful thinker, and a passionate teacher who prioritized ideas, metaphor, and personal expression. He became a mentor and lifelong friend to Teresa.

Non-Objectivity

Another key teacher in Teresa's life at Montserrat was the talented painter Paul Scott (1910-1982). Scott studied under and worked as a secretary for Hans Hoffman at his art schools in New York City and Provincetown, MA, in the 1950s. He shared Hoffman’s teachings with students at Montserrat. Scott would create "motifs" using folding chairs, paper, fabric, and various objects arranged chaotically. These motifs served as starting points for students to explore forms in space through movement, color, and composition, aiming for unity in their abstract paintings. Scott excelled at explaining the concept of "plasticity of space," essential for all types of painting, often illustrating it with examples from nature. His appreciation for all forms of art was exceptional.

Computers and Watercolors

After graduating from Montserrat in 1979, Teresa entered the world with knowledge in painting but no practical money-making skills, as she didn’t enjoy commercial art. She moved to Cambridge, MA, and took an entry-level job at an electronics company called Teradyne. There, she learned valuable skills in computer-aided design, a role that mixed logic with creativity, allowing her to support herself while continuing to paint and showcase her work. She also began taking classes in art history and humanities at Harvard University Extension School and started an undergraduate liberal arts program in 1985. During this time, Teresa switched from oils to watercolor and painted her surroundings.

Harvard Years/ Art History

To complete her degree in a timely manner, Teresa became a part-time worker and a full-time student. In the evenings, she would leave the busy workday, entering Harvard Yard into a calm environment of ideas. The challenges of lectures were complemented by visits to art museums in Boston and New York City, with the most impactful being a class trip to Italy led by art historian Professor Ivan Galantic.

Professor Galantic inspired his students to look at, experience, and appreciate great art and to think critically about it. Understanding the meaning of art and the artist's intent, along with the quality of technique, is like learning a new language that greatly enhances life experience. Art historians keep this language alive, going beyond just surface beauty. Teresa's time studying at Harvard opened her mind to many ideas and philosophies in the arts and humanities.

Fenway Studios: A Year of Experimentation

In 1989, Teresa earned her Bachelor of Liberal Arts, graduating cum laude from Harvard University Extension School. She then relocated from Cambridge to Boston, MA, where she rented a space at the historic Fenway Studios on Ipswich Street. In her new studio, Teresa experimented with color after studying design and color theory with Albert Alcalay at Harvard. Influenced by artist friends using body-part casts and other 3D elements in their work, she merged these ideas into her art. This year became one of artistic experimentation.

 Water & Light/Cape Cod

In the fall of 1990, Teresa left her job at Teradyne and moved from Boston to Cape Cod, MA, searching for a quieter place to live, paint, and appreciate nature. Her main aim was to paint full-time, understanding it would mean some sacrifices in her art. She rented a studio in a former sea captain’s home on The Old King's Highway in Yarmouthport. After painting there for the first fall and winter, she rented a small gallery space and opened T.Welch Studio & Gallery in spring 1991.

Click here to read: New This Season in Yarmouth Port- Teresa Welch Studio/Gallery, Claire Golding, Nauset Calendar, Indian Summer, 1991

From 1990 to 1995, Teresa ran her open studio and gallery, where she worked daily and sold watercolors, pastels, oils, and drawings, while also teaching private painting lessons. She developed a method to create full-figure portraits, mainly of children, in watercolor from photographs she took. Although working from photos was challenging, she could paint portraits long after the subjects had returned home from vacationing on the Cape.

She began with a charcoal drawing, matching the size of the final painting, to plan the composition and tone. Next, she traced a contour drawing onto 300lb Arches watercolor paper. Using both the charcoal drawing and the photo as references, she applied watercolor in washes to dampened areas, allowing the paint to soak into the heavy paper, similar to water-based paint on wet lime plaster in fresco techniques. By using simplified shapes and gentle forms, Teresa aimed to capture the essence of fresco paintings she admired in Florence, Italy.

The portraits were completed in between the flow of other works in pastel, watercolor and oil.........

...and also between the flow of landscape and figure work.

Continue to Middle Years