Art training at Sunderland College and Durham University encouraged Marjorie to explore her local landscape – an approach she continued throughout her life. Her residence in Nottinghamshire during the Miners’ Strike and subsequent pit closures led to Marjorie’s first exhibition of mining art in 1994. Sponsored by British Coal, the exhibition paid tribute to coal mining in the area. 

In an interview in 1997, Marjorie explained: “I feel it is important that future generations should have some record of how their forebears worked and lived”.