Margaret M. Porter was born in 1913 in the town of Crow's Nest Pass, Alberta and was raised in Toronto. She studied for three years at Central Technical School, in Toronto, and her instructors included renowned Canadian artists Carl Schaefer and Doris McCarthy. Upon graduating in 1936, Margaret was the only woman to find employment in the fine arts, in an interior design business.
Margaret married at age 25, and moved to Brantford Ontario with her husband Alfred, where she lived for 60 years. As was the case for many women of her generation, she stopped painting to a focus on family, and only started again after her husband's retirement in the 1970s. Her painting career has spanned five decades; from the 1930s and 40's, to her most prolific period in the 1970s and 80s. Her last painting was completed in 1996 at age 82.
Margaret's love for the outdoors defines the subject matter for paintings. She and her husband took many drives through the Ontario countryside. She used photographs from these trips, and small paintings done on site, as reference material for work that she would finish in the studio. Both her early works, and the later paintings show this love of countryside, and an appreciation for the unique form, landscape, colors, light, and subject matter distinctive to Ontario and New England. She worked primarily in watercolors, and produced approximately 200 finished paintings. She had two early exhibitions, a private showing in 1977, and an exhibition at the Guelph Public Library in 1978, but felt confined by the pressure of preparing for exhibitions. She continued to paint, but primarily for her own pleasure or for close friends and family members. The latest exhibition of Margaret Porter's work was held in 1999 at the retirement home in Guelph where she was living.
Margaret Porter's work is distinctively Canadian, and shows the influence and inspiration of both of her early teachers, Schaefer and McCarthy in the technique and handling of the medium, and in her treatment of subject. These artists, as well as noted Canadian painters such as A.J. Casson, reduce the landscape to simple forms and rhythmic shapes, with organic colours, and an ever-present sense of human habitation at the edge of nature.
