Bright student with old-fashioned values

Only a year ago Margaret Muller graduated from Slade with a masters in fine arts. She told the Evening Standard at the time she wanted to follow the most old-fashioned of artistic disciplines: modelling from life.

"All my work is now strictly observed," she said at her graduation show. "Students who wanted to go into the life room were strongly advised against it.

"They were told it was going to close down their creative instinct, whereas I think it is the complete opposite. You need something to respond to, to grow with."

She had come to London after studying in America and living all her life in Washington DC. It was while she was at George Mason Junior Senior High School that she first found her interest in art, contributing to a mural in her final year.

When she left in 1993, she studied art at the local George Mason University, winning prizes and gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

She kept studying, this time for a BSc in geology, which she was awarded in 1998.

That summer she left America to take up her place at Slade. The following year she was awarded the Melville Nettleship Prize.