MARGOT WIBURD - EXTENDED BIOGRAPHYBorn in Melbourne, Australia, Margot spent her early years as an advertising copywriter in Perth, Western Australia. At 21 she set off overseas and worked for a celebrity-filled year in a London theatrical agency representing singers such as Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck and Gilbert O'Sullivan. Returning to Melbourne, she trained in television production and spent several years as a producer’s assistant with the ABC, working on both documentary and studio programs including the original "Countdown". In 1977 Margot travelled to Germany to undertake language studies at the Goethe Institute in the Bavarian paradise of Murnau. After 10 months, she travelled to Spain – a country that so spoke to her spirit, she stayed for 8 years! For two years Margot taught English (somewhat illegally) in Valencia while learning to speak Spanish. This achieved, she moved to Madrid, where she spent 5 1/2 (legal) years with multi-national advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Working first as an Account Executive, then Account Supervisor and Director, she wrote creative strategies and supervised campaigns for a number of key accounts - leading a deliciously jet-setting life. After an absence of 9 years, Margot returned to Melbourne, Australia for family reasons and with a burning desire to study art. She was dux of her TOP Art and Design year at Brighton Technical College, going on to obtain her Bachelor of Fine Art in Gold & Silversmithing from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Soon after, a meeting with film director Paul Cox led to a much loved career in film production, working on all of Cox's feature films and documentaries from that time on. Her roles included continuity, script adviser, researcher, sound assistant, personal assistant and co-writer. Wishing to expand her art studies, Margot applied for and was awarded a two week scholarship to study oil painting at the Academy of Realist Art in Seattle. The experience crystallized her desire to seek thorough training in classical techniques. Hearing of a rigorous six month oil painting course at the Academy Albert deFois in France’s Loire Valley, she resolved to raise the necessary finance by creating her own sponsorship campaign. Sending out over 200 individually tailored letters to companies and individuals around Australia, she soon grew to dread the daily rejections brought by the postman. Her optimism, however, was finally rewarded. One day she received a phone call from a Sydney heiress who was so inspired by the proposed artistic journey that she presented Margot with a cheque for $10,000 - enabling her to follow her dream. (Read the story of Margot’s challenging career transition, “Leap of Faith”, in the newly released book, “The Path to Success”.) Margot’s six and three month painting sojourns in France imparted the techniques she required, and she finished her training with a week’s Masterclass in Portraiture with Master Painter Jacob Collins in New York. In 1998 she travelled to the utterly gorgeous, snowy Banff Centre for the Arts for a ten week painting residency, where she held her first solo exhibition. Later that year, Margot travelled to a remote peninsula paradise – a former Hansen's Disease (leprosy) colony – on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, to assist Cox in the making of a feature film on the life of Father Damien. At the conclusion of filming, Margot was granted permission by the local residents to stay and paint for a month in a tiny beach house outside the settlement. This period - spent in natural tropical surrounds with wild deer, wild horses, almost no tourist traffic, no shops, no entertainment other than her work, nature, the constant breeze, golden sunsets and the occasional visits of the friendly people of Kalaupapa - was a seminal experience. It consolidated her desire to devote her life to creative pursuits and to invest her work with a feeling of simplicity, uncomplicated space and serenity. In 2001 Margot was awarded a one year artist residency in Malaysia - selected by Hijjas and Angela Kasturi as part of the Rimbun Dahan Residency program offered to one Australian and one Malaysian artist each year. Inspired by the abundance of natural resources at her disposal, her travels within Malaysia, by the jade bracelets she received, and from selected still life objects, she worked both in pastel on paper and oil on canvas. She considers the Rimbun Dahan residency to be one of the finest opportunities through which an artist can focus, take risks, grow and give themselves heart and soul to their work in an atmosphere of support and kindness - with the added interest of immersion into a foreign culture. Following her Malaysian experience, Margot moved to the countryside near Australia’s Hanging Rock to live in an original miner’s cottage with her adored adopted Rottweiler, Cassie. There she worked independently as an artist for several years. Several group shows and a further solo exhibition in Melbourne continued the main theme of her work: an exploration of space, calm and simplicity. Late in 2004, she crossed Australia’s great Nullarbor Plain by car to set up residence in Western Australia. Here she combines writing, editing and art with occasional film work with Paul Cox, and when not hanging out with her by now three dogs, works part time at Murdoch University as a Teacher's Aide. |
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