Margaret Preston, Australia's foremost woman painter between the wars, sent a series of shock-waves through Sydney's art circles with her vital art, her spirited journalism and her belligerent enthusiasm for living, during a career that spanned over seventy years.

'A red-headed little firebrand of a woman', she was an artist who never stood still, moving from realism to Post-Impressionism, to an Aboriginal-inspired style of art with unceasing verve and freshness.