This Self-Portrait is vibrant in its colouring and reflects Margaret’s use of line and paint also evident in her landscapes from this period. Much later she described her technique of painting as a series of glazes built up to create the overall impression. The image on the canvas appears translucent, colours often overlapping but maintaining a clarity. Margaret was highly aware of the dangers of muddying colours and destroying her meticulous attention to mixing pigments and pitching them in often daring ways. She paints freely, confident in her ability to understand the movement of the eye across the composition. 

In 1965, Daniel Thomas noted in his review of Sydney’s Easter Show for the Daily Telegraph that Margaret Woodward was a new name to note. Equally Elwyn Lynn mentioned Margaret in his review of the 1965 exhibition at Blaxland Galleries of young contemporaries. It was clear that at 27 years of age she was starting to make her way. It was no surprise that when the inaugural Portia Geach Memorial Award for women portrait painters was announced that Margaret prepared a self-portrait. The work encompasses the promise identified by the reviewers, Margaret confident in her gaze firmly directed at the viewer, her arm leaning on a bench in what appears to be her studio. The colours leap out, particularly the red and orange tones that she uses for her clothes that merge with the pictures hanging in the background.

1965 was the year her daughter Britt was born, and the shape of Margaret’s body suggests she may have been pregnant or recently given birth when the work was painted, her hands posed to cut off the view of her body. Pregnancy is a time of self-reflection, of anticipation and awareness of change, not to mention confinement. The winning portrait of the inaugural Portia Geach Memorial Award was Self-Portrait by Jean Appleton with self-portraits regular winners throughout the years. Women artists, with little opportunity to develop their reputation also had little opportunity to approach well known members of the community or, given the usual juggling of home, children and their career, not able to travel to paint a subject of interest. The self-portrait was an important means to explore ideas and to present oneself to the art world.

Exhibitions and competitions:

Portia Geach Memorial Award, Dept of Education Art Gallery, Sydney, 1965. (Inaugural Award)

References

Daniel Thomas, “Show contest worth seeing,” Daily Telegraph, April 18, 1965, p.61.

Elwyn Lynn, “Young are going pop,” The Australian, April 1965, p.13.