Born in British Columbia of English parents, the artist studied in San Francisco, Westminster School of Art in London, Concarneau, Atelier Colarossi in Paris, at St Ives under Julius OLSSON, and at the Herkomer School in Bushey. The final 18 months of her sojourn in Britain (1899-1904) were spent in a sanatarium due to the decline in her health which began before her arrival in St Ives.

Olsson was not sympathetic to her need to avoid wind and glare on the beach, but in Algernon Mayow TALMAGE she found a mentor who understood the urges she demonstrated toward shade and forests: she painted in Tregenna Woods, a turning point in her artistic history.  Anecdotal information about her 'guardianship' over another artist, Harold Milford NORSWORTHY, looking after him for his anxious mother and including him in cartoon sketches that Tovey (2009) reprints in his chapter on 'Student Life in the Colony' (p259), makes for amusing reading.

Her special friend in St Ives was Hilda FEARON. Virtually nothing remains of her British work except for sketchbooks, and she began to write about the forest landscape and fishing villages of the Canadian West after illness curtailed her painting.