Margaret J Boone biography
14 March 1931 – 21 October 2011
Showing an early talent in art as a schoolgirl, Margaret won a scholarship to study painting at St Martin’s School of Art at the age of 16. She attended St Martin’s from 1947 to 1951.
After achieving her painting diploma (NDD), she enrolled at Goldsmith’s college to study to be an art teacher. However, Margaret had to leave the course after contracting TB and spent 8 months recovering.
She continued her passions for art and literature after marrying her husband Howard in 1953 and raising a family of three children, Caroline, Martin and Susie. By 1970, she had become fascinated by ceramics, and started to make individual stoneware pieces and sculptural wall hangings.
Throughout the 70s and until 1984, Margaret worked as a potter from home and installed a kiln in her garage and a small hand wheel. She exhibited her pottery regularly in Twyford, Reading and Henley venues. Her work was described by local newspaper, the Henley Standard, as having “a strongly organic feel and lustre glazes, with deep body colours giving an impression of rocky mass to these comparatively tiny forms”.
Indeed, Margaret’s pottery was often bold and challenging, and occasionally at odds with some of the more traditional local artists she was exhibiting alongside.
A review of an exhibition of local artists at the Henley Exhibition Centre in 1979, stated, “Very different pots are produced by Margaret Boone at her Twyford pottery.”
The review continued, “Her strikingly unusual designs, developed from organic shapes, are modelled or built up rather than thrown, and she is intensely interested in contrasting areas of matt unglazed areas against glazed parts. In these glazes there is a marked recent tendency to use more positive colour. Those pots which are functional, are of particular appeal to flower arrangers.”
Margaret also taught pottery part-time – both to children in the Polehampton Infant School and to adults.
She set up a popular adult class in Twyford called the Tuesday Potters which she ran for 11 years, bringing pottery into the lives of many local people.
In 1980 Margaret returned to creating two-dimensional work, using mixed media and oil on board. She was greatly inspired by the rocky landscapes of Pembrokeshire, working in watercolours, oils, acrylics and crayons. She also became an active member of both the Henley Guild and the Reading Guild of Artists.
Always fascinated by people and the human form, she explored life drawing, and ran a life drawing class for local artists. Margaret also organised a portrait group, persuading many locals with ‘interesting faces’ to model for her.
Margaret’s interest in texture and 3D sculpture re-emerged in 1992, when she started to experiment with collages.
“I became interested in collage, which I found combined my love for colour and texture within a satisfying three-dimensional space,” explained Margaret.
Margaret used a lively assortment of media, including handmade and commercial papers, balsa wood, acetate and plastic, and then had the works box framed using natural wood.
Throughout the 90s, Margaret created unique and striking collages. Her innovative work broadened her creative reach and she was invited to join the Ridley Art Group, which resulted in several exhibitions in London, including at the Atrium Gallery in Queensway and the Hyde Park Gallery.
“Much of my work is figurative, in the sense that at least one small figure appears somewhere in the picture, giving meaning and content to the various worlds which they inhabit,” she explained at the time.
Margaret considered her collages to be her finest and most mature work.
During the 00s, Margaret turned most of her attention to investigating her family history, before falling ill in 2011. However, she never stopped being inspired by visual ideas – still creating collages influenced by her landscape photography or sparked simply by a fascinating thought that came into her ever-active and inquiring mind.
A selection of Margaret Boone’s Group and Shared Exhibitions:
- Atrium Gallery, Queensway, London
- The Gallery, South Audley Street, London
- Hyde Park Gallery, London
- The Orangery, Holland Park, London
- South Hill Park, Bracknell
- The Reading Museum and Art Gallery
- The Jelly Leg’d Chicken Arts Gallery, Reading
- The Hexagon, Reading
- Exhibition Centre, Henley
- Oxford Art Society Exhibitions
- Woodstock Museum
- Salisbury Museum
- Wooburn Festival
Anyone who wishes to make a donation in Margaret’s memory, there is a Just Giving page for the benefit of the Royal Star and Garter Homes who look after Margaret's husband Howard so well:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/margarets-memory