Phyllida Barlow (1944– ) grew up in post-war Britain. Her
father, the psychiatrist Erasmus Darwin Barlow, was the
great-grandson of Charles Darwin. She graduated from Slade
School of Fine Art in 1966 and began a forty-year long career
as an art teacher at various institutions before she retired in
2009 to concentrate on her own art. During her teaching career
she taught the celebrated artists Rachel Whiteread, Tacita
Dean, Martin Creed and Ángela de la Cruz. Barlow and her
husband, the artist and writer Fabian Benedict Peake, the son of Mervyn Peake, author
of Gormenghast, have five children, two of whom are also successful artists – Eddie
Peake and Florence Peake, leading the Independent to call them “a British art dynasty”.
In 2010, she had her first exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Her work
such as Rig (2011) [below] is largely made up of objects she has scavenged, such as
wood, plaster, fabric and cement. In 2011 she was elected as a Royal Academician.