Margaret Milne was born in Methil in 1957. After graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee in 1979, she got her friends and family to sit for her portraits, or produced still life paintings when no models were available. Soon she began doing commissioned portraits. Her interest in painting portraits of her sitters in their own homes, surrounded by their own objects, is carried over to her still life paintings. The artist has amassed a large collection of objects which she arranges and re-arranges into new configurations, before preserving them on canvas.