Margaret Ashman studied Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire, followed by a Printmaking Masters at the University of Brighton.

Her carefully constructed images are composed from her own photography and borrowed elements from fabrics, garments, wallpaper, or books with an oriental influence.  She works with deaf dancers performing sequences of sign language or sign dance (a combination of dance and sign). A poem or phrase or idea is given to the dancer as a starting point, from which the work evolves. Further layers add new constructs until the etching process translates the final image into a coherent whole, with rich textures and delicate colour combinations. The addition of birds, flowers and other elements allows the viewer a window into the subconscious inner world, a different reality to the visible. Her interest in the orient stems from a family collection of Chinese and Japanese ceramics and embroideries with which she was familiar as a child. She was recently invited to the Guanlan Print Base in southern China as an International Artist in Residence. Her work is in a number of collections including the Guandong Museum of Art, Shenzhen University and the Ashmolean Museum.