How Did Morag Webster Shape a Career Across Art and Film?

Meet Morag Webster, painter, portraitist, builder of sets and ideas, whose path runs from a Scottish family’s nature-first values to childhood in Kenya and formative years in northern Ontario. In this interview for our women-in-arts network website, we discuss the through-line in her career: a hands-on curiosity that spans oil, watercolour, pastel, printmaking, sculpture, and years of theatre and film work as a scenic painter and props/set builder. You’ll also hear about her portrait commissions and TV appearance on “Star Portraits,” plus the community roles she’s taken on behind the scenes.

Morag shares how a grandmother-mentor set her on course, why learning many trades opened creative doors, and the simple test she trusts when a piece is working: when it flows, she follows it; when it doesn’t, she walks away and returns with fresh eyes. She talks candidly about raising kids while building a career, choosing safer materials at home, sketching between school runs, then later moving into a studio and leading crews on film sets. She digs into the theme that drives much of her practice: the gap between what we want from nature and what our habits do to it.

What we learn from her journey is practical and encouraging: stack skills, stay curious, respect the pause, and keep making. Morag’s goal is straightforward: create work that meets people where they are, and her parting advice is even more succinct: don’t stop, and don’t let rejection set the terms.

My work is inspired by life experiences growing up in a Scottish family that held the beauty of nature in the highest esteem. I started my life in the wilds of Kenya and eventually moved to northern Ontario, Canada, with my family, spending most of my formative years outdoors camping in untamed nature. I am interested in exploring how human population growth exploits nature and how we take for granted the effects our intrusion has on the environment. We often destroy what it is we seek to enjoy, all in the process of trying to get closer to it. Clear-cutting forests to build homes in the country, golf club lawn chemicals leaching into streams, divers’ sunscreens destroying coral reefs, introducing non native plants to gardens, unknowingly introducing invasive bug species to the continent, and these are just a few examples.

My work is a study of the relationship between what we want to see in nature and what we have done to the environment to improve our experience with it. I am compelled to develop work that highlights common interests, such as the beauty found in landscapes or waterscapes, and the disconnect we have with those manipulated environments. I plan to continue building bodies of work that examine the ongoing development of our culture, experiment with diverse media, and explore the impact of media on our culture, particularly in relation to consumerism and the environment. Through painting portraits or building installations, my work illustrates these ideas about our community’s development.

1. How did you get started in your art career?    

My grandmother was my mentor in the beginning. She was a graduate of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, England. I studied and took as many classes and workshops as I could while raising children. The variety of classes ranged from colour courses to painting, portrait painting, sculpture, to industrial courses like welding. I wanted to learn to work with a wide range of materials so that I could experiment and design different types of art projects. All these skills lead to work as a technician in theatre and in film, which supplemented my ability to live and create my own artworks.

2. When you’re creating something new, what makes you pause and say, This is working?

All I can say is that when it is working, it feels right and everything flows. When things feel like a struggle, I stop, leave it, put it aside and try on another day with fresh eyes.

3. How do you balance your personal life with your art career?

Finding balance has been the most challenging thing to do as an artist, mother, and wife. Through effort, I learned self-discipline, how to time manage and how to prioritise schedules. When my children were young, I took flexible courses so that I was always available to them. I carried a book where I made notes on inspirational thoughts and did sketches for later. I sketched and painted with watercolours so as not to have anything toxic near them. They had craft materials to play with as I painted near them.

When the children became self-sufficient, I got a studio so that I could experiment with paint and other materials and even construct sculptures. All this activity eventually led to me securing work as a technician in theatre and then in film, where I worked as a scenic painter and props builder. Finally, I was the lead, running crews that finished the film sets. This work has also allowed me to save for retirement. Now that I am retired from the film industry, my life is devoted to my art practice, family and friends. Never forgetting to keep a balanced life.

4. How do you envision the future of your art and its impact on the world?  

I want to create and, hopefully, have those who view my work see something that speaks to them.

5. What mediums and techniques do you primarily work with?

I enjoy experimenting with a variety of media. The subject matter of the project dictates the media to be used. Currently, I am painting in oils. But I have worked with printmaking, watercolours, pastels, glass, fibreglass, fabric, wood, metal and food to create paintings, installations and sculptures.

6. Do you have any parting words of wisdom for our readers or aspiring artists?

Don’t stop creating! Always do something that feeds the soul and fills your need for expression, no matter how small. Don’t let rejections be your trap.

Morag Webster’s work explores the relationship between people and the natural world, highlighting both the beauty we yearn to experience and the harm caused when we overstep our boundaries. Through portraits, landscapes, sculptures, and installations, she brings attention to the way culture and consumerism shape our environment.

From her journey, we learn the value of curiosity, persistence, and balance—whether that means experimenting with materials, stepping back when something isn’t working, or finding ways to create while raising a family. Her path shows that an artist’s practice can grow across many disciplines while staying grounded in a single, ongoing question about how we live with nature.

To learn more about Morag, visit the links below.

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