Marilynn Webb

An outstanding artist and art educator, Dunedin based Marilynn Webb, ONZM (1937 - 2021) gained international stature as a print-maker early in her career.

After training at the Dunedin College of Education, she worked as an art adviser for the Department of Education in Auckland and Northland, and for the Northern Māori Project, which encouraged contemporary Māori art.

Marilynn developed her pastel drawing work after she moved to Dunedin in 1974 to take up a Frances Hodgkin Fellowship. Her pastel and print series have focused on New Zealand's southern wilderness areas, remote and fragile environments: Lake Mahinerangi, the Ida Valley, Fiordland and Stewart Island in particular. Her work makes us aware that we are always in the landscape and draws us into the environmental and social issues surrounding it.  Her art over the years has explored concepts of land, ecology, politics, women in art, Māori and post-colonial history.

Webb has represented New Zealand at significant print and graphic arts biennales and her work has been exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and internationally in Australia, United States, India, Japan, Yugoslavia, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. From 1988 she lectured in printmaking at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art, teaching almost all emerging print artists in Otago and in 2004 was made an Emeritus Principal Lecturer at the School.

In 2000 she became an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for her contribution to printmaking in New Zealand.  2010 saw the University of Otago confer the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws to Marilynn.  Webb is widely considered to be one of New Zealand’s most distinguished and influential artists.