Adrianna De Barros

Born in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, de Barros moved to Toronto at the age of three. As a child she was mainly interested in sports; and only when she was twelve did she realize her interest in drawing. At age fifteen, her family decided to move back to her birthplace, where de Barros faced cultural challenges with her education and In high school, she choose to study art and design, deciding to pursue cinema in college. Upset with the lack of sophistication within the film schools and film industry in Portugal, she believes that Toronto "would have been a better location to pursue cinema than in Portugal." She wishes to one day have the opportunity to study filmmaking in North America. Out of high school, she began working temporarily for her family's clothing business. The experience led to a full time job as a fashion and advertising designer for the company, as well as co-running a copy center with design section.

In 1999, de Barros began web design and programming. She mentions finally finding her place online by "combining various art forms into each project”. The Internet providing non-geographical boundaries and easiness for de Barros to write and create English language projects. She began with exploration in frame-by-frame Flash visual poems to founding an online film and arts magazine, Scene 360, where she would write film and art analyses and profile creative individuals. Not having a formal degree, de Barros is self taught

Today, she still runs her copy center, as she designs in her studio. She is principal and creative director of Breathewords.com. Her work encompasses various media from hand-painted illustrative magazine covers e-commerce and wacky Flash sites for poets (e.g. HotEmuluv).