Marilynn Lois Webb ONZM (11 September 1937 – 16 August 2021) was a New Zealand artist, noted for her contributions to Māori art and her work as an educator.
Webb's art was inspired by land issues, activism and environmentalism, including notably in the 1970s work that criticised the New Zealand government's Think Big economic strategy and its impact on the environment, as well as by Māori culture and post-colonial history.
Her landscapes include depictions of Lake Mahinerangi, the Ida Valley, Fiordland, and Stewart Island / Rakiura.
[7] In the 1960s Webb travelled widely, including to Spain, England, North Africa and Alice Springs in Australia.
[8][3] In 1974 she began the development of her pastel work at the University of Otago, having been awarded the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship.
[9] In 2004, New Zealand writer Cilla McQueen said of Webb's work: "In her company I feel the power of the natural world".
[11] In her 1982 series Taste Before Eating, commissioned by the Dowse Art Museum, her hand-coloured landscape prints were accompanied by satirical recipes, in the style of radio personality Aunt Daisy, which criticised Robert Muldoon's Think Big industrial projects and their impacts on New Zealand's natural resources.
[3] She also won first prize at the Te Awamutu Festival Exhibition with her work Dust Cloud Central Australia.
[11][26] Lonie said in 2004 that Webb "works to remind people of the importance of the landscapes of the heart, to record places which will not remain the same for long, and to create images which hold local histories in a way which is accepted by those communities".
[11] In addition to her own artistic career, Webb taught art for over thirty years in Dunedin in high schools and at tertiary level.