Pegi Nicol MacLeod was a Canadian painter whose modernist self-portraits, figure studies, paintings of children, still lifes and landscapes are characterized by a fluidity of form and vibrant colour. Born Margaret Kathleen Nichol, she was a teacher, war artist and arts activist. In 1936 she became a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and one year later she joined the Canadian Group of Painters.

Her family moved to Ottawa in 1908 when Pegi was four where her father became principal of the Ottawa Technical School. The family lived on Frank Street and Pegi attended elementary at Cartier Street School. In 1914, when war broke out, the family moved to Toronto and Pegi attended Harbord Collegiate Institute. The Nichols returned to Ottawa after the war where Pegi finished her early education at the Ottawa Collegiate Institute.

She lived in Toronto from 1934 to 1937 and became good friends with Eric Brown, the first director of the National Gallery of Canada. Through Brown and his wife, Maud, Nicol developed friendships with artists in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as leading figures of the Canadian cultural and social establishment, including Vincent Massey and his wife, Alice Massey. She began a five-year relationship with Richard Finnie by 1925. She married Norman MacLeod on December 10, 1936. The couple then moved to New York City, but she returned annually to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where, with Lucy Jarvis in 1940, she opened an art centre, the Observatory Art Centre, for aspiring artists at the University of New Brunswick.