A new exhibition at the Margaret Olley Art Centre (MOAC) celebrates the iconic artist’s “sanctuary” and favourite room in her Sydney home – the Yellow Room. The Yellow Room: Margaret Olley celebrates this treasured room with a stunning selection of paintings from the early 1990s until 2011, the year of her death.

The Duxford Street house in Paddington was Margaret Olley’s home studio for more than 40 years and included a small, pale yellow room at the rear of the Victorian terrace that formed the front section of the property. It was her sanctuary – a place to live and a place to paint. Its significance to Margaret’s life and work led to the room’s re-creation in the Margaret Olley Art Centre at Tweed Regional Gallery.

The paintings in the new exhibition are complemented by preparatory sketches and unfinished boards. The unfinished boards are at various stages of progress, so they reveal the layers of paint and colour that Margaret worked through on the way to a finished work.

Her process and approach to painting is also the inspiration for a new interactive digital painting program at MOAC that allows visitors to create their own artwork. The interactive program allows the mixing of colours on a screen, simulating the process Margaret undertook by mixing oil paint on board.

Image (detail): Margaret Olley (1923– 2011), Yellow room, evening 1993, courtesy Philip Bacon Galleries.