Margot Sandeman was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 27 May 1922 and was the daughter of Archibald Sandeman (1887-1941), a chemist and exhibiting watercolourist, and Muriel Boyd (1887-1881), a renowned embroiderer who had studied at Glasgow School of Art. In 1939 Margot enrolled at the GSA but left after two years following the death of her father in 1941. During her time at the GSA she studied painting and drawing under Hugh Adam Crawford (1898-1982) and attended the Saturday morning classes given by Benno Schotz (1891-1984). In 1942 she worked for six months as a messenger at Bletchley Park, the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. She subsequently set up a studio at Cowcaddens, Glasgow where she worked as a painter, mainly in oil.

In 1946 she married the potter James Robson, an art school contemporary. During the mid-1950s she started making small ceramic female figures. Following the birth of her two sons, Peter in 1957 and David in 1960 she painted less frequently but returned to the easel with fresh vigour in the late 1960s.

Apart from a gap between 1958 and 1968, Sandeman exhibited regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh from 1946 to 1972. She also exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; and at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Solo exhibitions of her work were held at Lillie Art Gallery in Milngavie; Hughson Gallery in Glasgow; and at Demarco, Open Eye and Talbot Rice Galleries in Edinburgh

In 1964 she won the Royal Scottish Academy Guthrie Award and in 1970 the Anne Redpath Award. She Laing Competition in 1989

Late in her career, Sandeman collaborated with Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006), who had been a fellow student at the GSA, on still life paintings which incorporated poetic or philosophical texts.

Her address was given as 21 Lochend Road, Bearsden, Glasgow in 1946 and 1958; and 40 Rubislaw Drive, Bearsden, Glasgow in 1968 and 1972. In 1973 she and Robson bought a bothy in High Corran Isle of Arran where the family often lived. Sandeman died in Bearsden, Glasgow on 17 January 2009.

_{Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)}