My friend Margaret Evans, who has died aged 82, was an intuitive, vibrant painter who, during her time at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, made a particular impression on its principal, William Coldstream.
I met Maggie when she arrived at the Slade in 1954. She was already an experienced painter who knew what she wanted to do. She spent a great deal of time in the life rooms at the Slade, but did her best work in her room at the student hostel. This was her world, crowded with the things she collected – tea mugs, vases, bric-a-brac, reproductions, colourful tablecloths, folders, sheaves of paper – as well as her pastels and paint tubes, an easel and canvases.
There was always a painting on the go and she liked to talk as she continued with her latest project. When friends called round, she would merrily keep on applying paint, casting only sporadic glances at the canvas or the subject. Her pictures somehow resembled the room she inhabited: chaotic and colourful.
A day later, though, something would have happened – the introduction of a few broken lines, perhaps some edges had been sharpened and miraculously the subject would emerge out of the layers of colour. Her approach was the exact opposite of the prevailing Euston Road method of concentrated observation, systematic measuring and working in silence. Coldstream remarked that of all the work produced at the Slade, her paintings would survive.
Daughter of Lucy (nee Roberts) and Alfred Evans, Maggie was born in Wigan, where her father ran an electrical shop. After leaving school, she was persuaded to take a position with a local bank. She hated the work, made drawings all over the blotters and lost the job. Her family finally accepted that she could take up art. She attended Wigan College of Art for four years, and from there went to the Slade.
Maggie had five children who became the centre of her life and subject of her art: Tim, her son with Nicholas Garland; and Lucinda, Fran and Sam, the children of her first marriage, to Dan Oestreicher. Her son, Titus, from her second marriage, to Andrew Moore, died in a motorcycle accident in 1994. Both marriages ended in divorce, and Maggie reverted to her maiden name. She continued to paint throughout her life, and in 1963 was the subject of a film directed by David Storey for the BBC Monitor series.
When I visited Maggie a few months ago, what struck me was her stature and straight back, which gave her the same old presence and dignity, and the penetrating gaze of her blue eyes.
