The paintings on this page were exhibited at Savill Galleries from 22 August - 15 September 2002.
Margaret Olley was born in Lismore, New South Wales in 1923 and is recognised as one of Australia's foremost still life painters.
Olley's paintings depict intimate interiors and colourful environments. Her still life's and interiors reflect the objects within her surroundings and the characteristics of the immediate world around her.
The objects that Olley brings into her home are not for their pleasant decorative aesthetics but more so for their paint-ability. It is seldom that Olley paints a single object but prefers a magnitude of items in her compositions that produces a 'dialogue between the purity of shapes and their spatial relationships'.
Olley is not easily influenced by the changing movements and fashions of the fine art world. 'Although she is well aware and tolerant of current trends, Margaret Olley makes no stylistic concessions to fashion in her painting Olley's independence from stylistic trends placed her in a similar position to Lloyd Rees during the 1960s. They were not seen to be mainstream or avant garde, but critics usually gave them positive reviews.' Margaret Olley, Christine France, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002, pp46-72.
Margaret Olley has held more than sixty solo exhibitions during her career, her first show in Sydney in 1948. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the Mosman Art Prize in 1947 and the Helena Rubinstein Portrait Prize in 1962. In 1997 a major retrospective of Margaret Olley's work was organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the same year she was declared an "Australian National Treasure". In 2000 Olley was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letter from the University of Queensland and an Honorary Doctorate of Visual Arts from the University of Sydney.
On June 12, 2006 Olley was awarded Australia's highest civilian honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia, for her commitment to art and philanthropy. Savill Galleries has a long association with the work of Margaret Olley. The gallery will consider the purchase of any authentic Margaret Olley paintings held in private or public collection.
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