Jud was born in Michigan's upper peninsula sometime after the Renaissance. The group of Sunday painters which met at the local high school was his first taste of anarchy. The town poet who had alledgedly broken up his maternal grandmother's happy homme befriended him over her scrubbed watercolors; the photographer from Cleveland taught him "gesture drawing" and how to be smug in the knowledge of his aesthetic superiority; the young woman from Michigan State University who flung paint and always arrived with a large canvas floor covering debated on keeping the flor covering over the painting; the housewives whose love of gossip greatly exceeded their love of art were all in attendance.

He happened into higher education by finding a school in the back of a dictionary. Receiving his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he meandered to Tennessee where they promised him a teaching fellowship, a studio, and an MFA.

Never once considering that he would have to work for a living, he stumbled into advertising at the first or second hunger pang. For sixteen years he struggled to create a need for unnecessary products, all the while teaching university courses in the evenings. It took him all that time to realize the spring in his step on the days he would teach. Bingo! He landed at Wayne State University where he received his state teaching certificate.

He spends most of his time painting now, having retired from teaching in 2008.