Jennifer Anderson was born in Glasgow in 1975 and lived just outside the city, until the age of 17. She then moved to Dundee to attend Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art from which she graduated with a first class honours degree in fine art painting at the age of 21. Since then she has returned to Glasgow and is living and working in the city's West End.

Critic's Statement : [she] combines clear-eyed examination with formidable illusionistic skill, producing sensitive, haunting portraits. Within
tightly-cropped compositions, illuminated by unsparing mid-winter light, she conveys the real, weighty physicality of her subjects while at the same time hinting at the inaccessibility of their inner lives. Anderson's subjects seem to balance their own reserve, their self-sufficient presence, against the artist's sustained scrutiny. Surfaces - a creased white shirt, scraped-back jet-black hair, or the slope of a cheek bone - are described fluently, the restrained palette emphasising subtle tonal shifts. These haunting images explore the limits of what we can learn from observation - even observation of those whom we see often and know well - something which gives Anderson's work a universal quality transcending most individual portraiture.
Bunny Smedley, critic and historian