Therese Ryder

Therese Ryder was born at Santa Teresa in 1946, a Catholic mission approximately 80km south east of Alice Springs. This is where she first started to paint. An excellent painter, both with watercolours and acrylic, Therese's paintings have since been exhibited widely both within Australia and overseas.

The leading figure in the tradition of Arrente Landscape Painting, often also referred to as the Hermannsburg watercolourist school, is Albert Namatjira (1920-1959). Over the following years a number of other Arrente men and women took up painting in the same medium, each with a distinct style of their own. The best paintings show a fine control of light and colour and a strong decorative instinct.

The paintings have always been more than landscapes in the conventional non-Aboriginal sense. They have a dimension beyond the view which regards country as scenery. The artists themselves describe the paintings as being directly related to the land, to the songs that come from the land, and to the dreaming. They should be recognised for what the artists see them as: part of a living title to land they belong to.

Therese Ryder sadly passed away in 2023.