A PLYMOUTH artist has won a national prize only months after finishing her college course.

Kasia Andrews picked up the Art Liberating Lives portrait award at a charity exhibition in London.

The 32-year-old's success came in the Sue Ryder Care fundraiser at the Mall Galleries.

Kasia put in portraits of her friend Kevin French, a life model who has cerebral palsy, for the competition.

She said she was inspired by his achievements in art. A dancer who learned of Kevin's modelling invited him to take part in a professional project and he has now gone on to a dance theatre degree course.

"This is a fantastic thing for someone with such a severe disability to do," Kasia added. "I don't think he would ever have thought he could have done this without the modelling. This just proves that art does indeed liberate lives."

Early in 2009, when she was still a student at Plymouth College of Art, Kasia was also a finalist in the Holburne Portrait Prize, presented by the Holburne Museum in Bath and open to artists from across the West Country. She has since qualified with a first-class honours degree in fine art.

Somerset-born, Kasia moved to Plymouth nine years ago.

She completed a diploma in art and design at Estover Community College before doing an Access To Education course at what is now City College Plymouth.

Kasia's photo-realistic portraits in black and white have attracted critical and popular acclaim.

She says she prefers to work on a large scale, frequently with dynamic viewpoints and extreme close-up, to concentrate on often overlooked aspects of the face.

She held her first solo show at Ashburton's Gallery 22 in 2007 and has also exhibited at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, Artspaces in Totnes and the Delamore, Cornwood, as well as in Bath and London.

The Sue Ryder Care Art Liberating Lives exhibition attracted 400 guests to the private view alone.

The event, now in its fifth year, brought in more than £30,000 for the charity through a percentage of sales of pictures by professional and amateur artists.

Sue Ryder Care helps people with long-term conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and cancer.