Theresa Poulton was born in Everton, United Kingdom, 1963, she lives and works in the North East of England.

Theresa is a hard-edged, abstract, geometric painter making illusory environments of contrasting colour and distorted perspectives. She exaggerates the sense of depth and space by use of line, shape and form.

Theresa makes polychromatic paintings that sit within the traditions of canvas painting and painting in the expanded field.

Her academic studies began in 2007, with an Access to Art and Design course, at Stockton Riverside College.

She continued her Fine Art education at University of Sunderland and was awarded a First Class BA Hons in 2011.

Theresa gained a MFA at Newcastle University, in 2013.

In 2014 Theresa taught students at the Shiv Nadar University, New Delhi and at Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University, Hyderabad, India.

She also delivered a one-day art workshop to village children from the Howrah District, West Bengal.

In 2016 Theresa worked with Ethnomusicologists from Durham University's Music Department and GemArts on her first collaborative project titled Khyal: Music and Imagination.
She was initially commissioned to make work to be exhibited in three group shows, at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, the New Walk Gallery in Leicester and at The Oriental Museum, Durham. The exhibitions were very successful and as part of the continuing series of group shows the works were also shown at The Bhavan, Asian Cultural Centre, London and at the Nehru Centre also in London.

Theresa's Khyal paintings are now part of Durham University's private art collection, she also has paintings in Newcastle University's Business School's private collection. Theresa also has work in private collections in the UK and abroad.

Theresa delivers participatory art workshops, touching on many art disciplines, to community groups, schools, colleges and universities throughout the North East of England.

Theresa was nominated by Lothar Goetz to exhibit in Fully Awake 3:5 at The Royal College of Art in London in September 2018. Fully Awake 3:5 was a group exhibition featuring work by 36 artists celebrating the inter-generational relationships formed by teaching painting in UK art schools. The curators invited 12 artists to submit a piece of work, these artists then invited two ‘guest’ artists to exhibit with them; an artist that they have been taught by, and an artist that they have taught.

Theresa has developed a text based painting workshops for Arabic speaking, Syrian and Sudanese refugees, currently living in the North East of England. The word Wahda, Arabic for unity, is the basis for this cross cultural workshop which is an area of great personal interest for Theresa. She has painting a new series of text based based works as a result – these works are on-going.

In March 2019 Theresa devised and delivered a series of figurative drawing workshops alongside the Leonardo de Vinci : A life in Drawing exhibiton at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens. The exhibition was to mark the 500th anniversary of Da Vinci's death.

In response to the Hatton Gallery's Exploding Collage exhibition, April 2019, Theresa worked with participants from two community groups - Chilli Studios and North Tyneside Art Studios (NTAS), to create a body of work for ANONYM an exhibition at the Bridge Gallery, Tynemouth Station.
Many of the artists involved had their first experience of exhibiting their art.

Featuring the work of twenty abstract artists, Unfinished Business was a group show curated solely by Theresa at the Long Gallery and Ex Libris Gallery, Newcastle University. Unfinished Business, was a celebration of the Bauhaus Centenary.

Theresa continues to work as a community artist teaching adults with with mental health and complex needs.

Over the last year Theresa's work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions both in the UK and internationally.

Theresa has a studio within the artist led NewBridge Project in Newcastle upon Tyne.