Margaret Ashman read physics at Oxford and worked for several years in the field of Acoustic Optics. She retrained as an artist printmaker between 1998 and 2005 at the Universities of Hertfordshire and Brighton.

She makes original prints on paper concerned with emotion and the unconscious. Her imagery includes hands, sign language and oriental artwork. She combines and manipulates her own photographs to generate printing plates which are inked and printed using traditional methods.

Her highly crafted photo etchings have been shown extensively and are held by numerous collections including the Ashmolean Museum, Shenzhen University, Lovells and Citibank.