Australian-born artist Theresa Byrnes began to exhibit her paintings in 1986 at the age of 16. She has had over 25 solo shows at spaces including Saatchi & Saatchi in New York and Sydney, Cristianne Nienaber Contemporary Art NYC, the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C., and many others, her paintings are owned by prominent collectors & celebrities worldwide. In 1996 Byrnes was awarded a Young Australian of the Year award, her performance pieces have been called “wondrous,” “purist,” and “uncompromising,” by London's Daily Mirror. She has performed at Saint Marks Church @ The Bowery & for the Queens Council for the Arts. Byrnes published her autobiography The Divine Mistake in 1999 (Pan Macmillan, Australia) - Amala Films based in LA are producing a bio-pic based on Byrnes's The Divine Mistake. Byrnes is currently writing her new memoir. She moved from Sydney to New York in 2000 and received Pollock-Krasner awards in 2003 and 2006.
““Covered in viscous shining paint, drenched with color Theresa Byrnes body becomes the agency of a visual, spatial transformation, marking, splattering, stroking surrounding surfaces. The effects are fierce and luscious, extending the radical marks of Kline, Pollock, and the dimensional implications of Abstract Expressionism. These physicalized events move between aesthetic principles of painting and sculpture as space is marked and concentrated by the physical activations of her body as medium. These performative paintings challenge aesthetic conventions, which are optical, physical as well as medical, just as temporality intensifies the emotive unpredictability of these actions.”
Carolee Schneemann, artist”