Art enthusiasts may recognise this woman. Laura Jacobs recently appeared on the BBC2 Show Me The Monet. It was a 10-part art series in which aspiring artists attempted to win a chance to sell their work in a prestigious exhibition.
Ms Jacobs was one of just 35 chosen from thousands of applicants by the panel of renowned experts to exhibit her work at the Royal College of Art in London. What's more, she successfully sold her work - a poignant photographic piece of two figures titled Between 'me' and 'you'- History Series -- for £1,750.
Currently on a scholarship at art school in the United States, Ms Jacobs, from north London, tells People: "The piece is very personal to me but I think other people can relate to it. It was great to be picked - I was delighted. And exhibiting at the Royal College was a surreal experience. The course I am on in America is very intense and I had come over for a day. It was interesting to hear what people in the art world thought about my work. It's one thing being in a studio and another being in a public arena."
With a background in theatre design, Ms Jacobs graduated in fine art from the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She is now on a three-year advanced painting and drawing course in New York. "I wanted to see how far I could push my ideas using painting." She is particularly interested in the interplay between photography, film, drawing and painting.
Her winning piece, she says, "involves the use of multiple spaces, light, the photograph and text and how they work together to evoke a sense of memory and time, loss and longing, presence and absence. There is an emphasis on the mark made by the passage of one person through another person's life, the gap between the self and the other, and the space that exists between 'me' and 'you'."
The judges --aka the "Hanging Committee" - on the show comprised Charlotte Mullins, contemporary art specialist, writer and broadcaster, art critic David Lee and art historian Roy Bolton.
