Deanna Petherbridge (b. 1939)

Deanna Petherbridge CBE is an artist, writer and curator primarily concerned with drawing and she has also produced large-scale murals and designed for the theatre.

Since the early 1990s she has promoted the importance of drawing in relation to contemporary art practice in journal articles, books, catalogues, exhibitions, public lectures and conference papers. Her most recent book is The Primacy of Drawing: Histories & Theories of Practice, Yale University Press.

Professor Emeritus, University of the West of England, Bristol, Petherbridge was Visiting Professor of Drawing at the University of the Arts London 2009-2012, and Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art 1995- 2001 where she launched the Centre for Drawing Research, the first doctoral programme in drawing in the UK.

Petherbridge's drawing relates to the immensely quick-growing bamboo thickets surrounding an architect’s house in Goa which Petherbridge often visits. It is based on memory, not observation, and reflects an interest in bamboo as a structural material.