Born in Lismore in 1923, Margaret Olley is one of Australia's most prized interior and still-life painters. Demonstrating a fierce disregard for trends and fashions, Olley's exquisite arrangements of flowers, fruit and objects seduce the viewer with their technical virtuosity and inherent grace. Her arrangements are always elegant, the objects always beautiful. Complexities of space and light are rendered with consummate skill. Olley's subjects are almost always from her own home - itself famous as an exquisite work of art. She first came to public attention as the beguiling subject of Dobell's winning Archibald portrait in 1948, and these days is regarded as a national treasure. In 1997, her work was the subject of a major retrospective organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.