Trudy Barber

Trudy ran away from school to join Salisbury College of Art in 1977, where she studied arts foundation, graphic design and illustration; eventually going onto study Fine Art as a mature student at Southampton institute of Higher Education from where she managed to get artist in residence positions with National Power at Fawley Power Station, the Morphology Laboratory at Southampton University and the Hampshire Health Authority at Winchester.

Trudy then ran away again to London in search of an ‘artists life’ at a London Art College. After gaining her Fine Art Degree at Central Saint Martins College of Art in 1993, she went on to gain a PhD at the University of Kent specialising in sexuality and digital culture and went into Academia as a Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth. During this time, she would continue her arts practice, especially drawing in charcoal, pencil and pastel – and decided to submit a self portrait drawing to the first series of Portrait Artist of the Year and was selected for the Glasgow episode.