Margaret Woodward (b. 1938), painter, grew up in Sydney where she gained a scholarship to study art at the NAS. While still a student, she won the Le Gay Brereton Prize for Drawing; she has since participated in countless solo and group exhibitions. From 1961 to 1971 she taught at various secondary schools and colleges; from 1972 to 1978 she taught at the West Australian Institute of Technology in Perth; from 1979 to 1985 she taught at Hornsby College of TAFE. Meanwhile, from 1967 she travelled widely through remote areas of Australia and abroad. She won the Wynne Prize in 1971 and the Portia Geach Memorial Awards in both 1983 and 1984. Recipient of a number of smaller prizes, she has been an Archibald finalist seven times, several times with self-portraits, of which she has made many over the course of her career (the ‘horned’ turban is characteristic.) The Art Gallery of New South Wales has four of her works and she is represented in a number of regional galleries. Gavin Fry’s monograph Margaret Woodward was published by the Beagle Press in 2003.
