Born in a small country town in New Zealand, Trudy grew up on a dairy farm with lots of surrounding lush country side and bushland.

After studying photography, shop display, graphic art and design Trudy worked in many varied roles from interior and exterior painting and paperhanging, screen printing, and advertising; which included product display and promotion.

Trudy travelled to Australia in 1988 where she married an Australian man; they have 3 children.

“As the kids got older I found myself wanting to draw again, I experimented with pastels for while and joined an art group to help me focus and have something to work towards. I found this became a little too overwhelming, I was pressuring myself to draw while juggling work, home life, and also being the main carer of our daughter, who has an intellectual disability. I left the group after 6 months and my art was put on the back burner again.

After quite a few years I went to an exhibition at Montsalvat by an artist ‘Jessica Page’ who created beautiful pieces of art with ballpoint pen, I fell in love with her pictures and that’s where drawing with ballpoint pen began for me.

Drawing with ballpoint pen is not a very forgiving media to work with, and can be very time consuming. I find it very rewarding and therapeutic, it helps me focus on life each and every day, to really be in the moment and take in the present.

Nature and birds are my inspiration, bright colours and cheeky personalities of all the different species of birds.

My life motto is “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that is why it is called the present.”