An adopted person, she was Public Relations Officer for Jigsaw Victoria, the organisation which successfully campaigned for retrospective changes to adoption laws in Victoria.
She has devised a varied program of poetry and prose readings which she has presented at many venues and festivals in Australia, as well as conducting popular workshops for writers on reading their own work in public. In January 2001 she returned to the stage, appearing in two successful seasons of Love Letters with Alan Hopgood, her former TV husband in Bellbird. Alan and Maggie have subsequently developed two plays on the theme of living with diabetes. Maggie regularly performs in these across Victoria and interstate.
She appeared as the Empress of China in the panto Aladdin in York, England in 2002, and the following year as Fairy Godmother in Cinderella in Torquay. She opened the Daphne du Maurier Festival in Fowey in 2003. In 2005 she appeared in the successful season of Rebecca Lister’s play If I Should Die Before I Wake at Chapel off Chapel.
A 'splendid speaker', she gave the final address for 500 leading Melbourne women at the final Mary Owen Dinner at Prahran Town Hall in May 2005.
Since taking up painting some years ago, Maggie has exhibited her pastel works in many art shows, winning a Highly Commended award in her very first exhibition with Bass Coast Artists Society. She studied pastels with a number of teachers including Pat Shannon and Janet Matthews, and has specialized in portraits and animal studies, especially studies of the big cats with whom she is desperately in love! Maggie has received a number of commissions for her portraits and landscapes.
In 2000 she successfully held her first solo exhibition at Chapel off Chapel. She has recently taken up oil painting and is currently working towards a second solo exhibition in late 2006.
She is inspired by the work of American artist Wolf Kahn, whose breathtaking use of colour in his landscapes is a constant source of wonder. She is presently working on developing her own style of landscape painting. |
