At an early age, P. K. Page/Irwin displayed an aptitude for illustration, and even her juvenalia indicated a sharp, painterly eye. But it wasn’t until she visited Brazil in the 1950s as wife of the Canadian ambassador, that she began to hone her artistic practice. Under her married name, P. K. Irwin, she produced a wide array of paintings, drawings and other artworks, experimenting with media and styles as she sought to develop her own visual aesthetic, and to reconcile her celebrated poetic identity with her more private, painterly one.

In The Art of P. K. Irwin, Michèle Rackham Hall investigates the artist’s creative development and examines the exotic locales and the wealth of accomplished peers who helped shape Irwin’s artistic output. With rich biographical detail and extensive reference to Irwin’s lyrical life writing, The Art of P. K. Irwin takes readers along on the artist’s journey toward her own aesthetic, one in which "place was her most potent muse, and exile her most fertile state."