Tessa Teixeira is a conceptual artist that primarily enjoys expressive painting, that leans towards partial abstraction. Her work is motivated by existential philosophical ideas, that reflect on consciousness and sentience. Her art practice has naturally evolved towards responding to climate change, ecological and loss of biodiversity challenges. Tessa is moving her practice towards sustainability principles, as reflected in her current project Seeing Green. Plants are represented and included in her work, as sentient collaborators in the creative process. 

In her early twenties Tessa focused on projects addressing social inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa, in access to housing, and employment opportunities for marginalised socio-economic communities and she formed the ‘Joint Community schools Project’ NGO, that raised the money required to build a 12 classroom school, Besilindhile Primary in Witbank Ext 3, for school children who had been receiving informal tuition, under trees. In this period, she regularly painted privately.

Tessa completed a B prim Ed teaching degree, majoring in Art in 1991, through the University of the Witwatersrand and her self-portrait painting, was kept by the Johannesburg College of Education’s Arts department. She has since retrieved it and it is now in her personal collection. She started focusing on her art practice, based in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2009, and she participated in art semester programmes, at Art Institutions in San Francisco and London, some of which included the San Francisco Academy of Art and the University of California – Berkeley Ext in 2010, Central St Martins College of Art & Design, the Princes Drawing School and Heatherly’s School of Art in 2011 in London and The Crown Point Press in San Francisco in 2019.

Tessa was invited to spend a month in residency at Zaratan Contemporanea in Lisbon, Portugal last year September, and she has regularly exhibited locally and internationally since 2010, and her work is included in private and public collections. She has been featured and published in Art publications and live Artist Talk podcasts.

Some solo and group exhibitions include; Zaratan - Arte Contemporanea - Lisbon, Portugal - ‘Orchidaceae Herbarium’ Solo Exhibition.(2024) Contrafair.Joburg - Braamfontein, JHB, SA - ‘Step into the forest’ - Solo Exhibition.(2024), R.W.Norton Art Museum - Shreveport, LA, USA. - ‘ Bloom’ - Group Exhibition. (2023); Climate Art Collection - Berlin, Germany - Online Group Show (2022), Global 3000,Gallery for sustainable art  - Berlin, Germany - ‘1.5 Degrees ‘ Group show (2021); University of the Witwatersrand Art Museum (WAM), Johannesburg, SA. ‘Art of Lithography’. - Group show (2019). Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Johannesburg, SA. ‘ Nothing stands still’; Solo Exhibition.(2018)