Artist Biography

"When a girl, I was always colouring in with coloured pencils and watercolours and trying realy erally hard to stay within the printed lines. 

At the secondary college I attended, there was no art class.  The French teacher offered to come in on Saturday mornings to teach art to those who wanted to participate.  I was one of the four or five students who would go back to school on the Saturday morning to learn art.  She showed us the process of batik.   This intrigued me: applying melted wax onto fabric, immersing it into dye and using a household iron to release the wax and voila: – a pattern, a picture.   Later, when I was in my thirties, I brought out those remembered lessons and made batik silk scarves, wall hangings and framed works and sold them.

At thirty years of age I found myself as a single parent of two children and no money and no skills for an independent income. During this time I wrote my first poem and continued writing poems which became an outlet for my strong emotions. I became very determined and focused to earn some money – Looking at outings that did not cost money I would take my children to parks. I began to pick up gum leaves and gum nuts from the ground fascinated with their colours and shapes; my gatherings I made into jewellery and also painted Australian Wildflowers on t shirts, hats, etc.  I developed  Margaret Goddard Studios - dyeing and batiking and hand painting fabrics specializing in Australian Wildflowers and animals; making jewellery from gum leaves, gum nuts, seeds, etc.  wholesaled and retailed in Australia and overseas.  On occasions I painted a watercolour. "