Claudette Schreuders was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1973. She did her undergraduate training at the University of Stellenbosch and obtained her MA degree from Michaelis in 1997. She was selected for ‘Earth and Everything’, an exhibition of contemporary South African art at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol, England in 1996 from a body of student work that the curators spotted in Gavin Younge’s office at Michaelis.
Schreuders was applying to do her MA and the work was there for consideration. She held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Civic Gallery in 1998. Schreuders has worked in a variety of artistic media. She is best known for her sculpture, She has been associated with Bitter Comix since its inception and is familiar with comics as an art form. She is also well known as a sculptor. Besides her sculpture, Schreuders creates line drawings in sketchbooks. Hardground etching was therefore a very direct process for her to use with Payne.
Schreuders describes herself as something of a perfectionist, working slowly and indulging in her labour-intensive process, which she sees is quite revelatory in terms of understanding one’s intentions and desires.