Trained at the Edinburgh College of Art, she exhibited at the Summer Exhibitions of the Royal Society of Arts and became friends with Margaret Mellis, the future wife of Adrian Stokes (December 23^rd), who introduced her to modern art.  Due to repeated bouts of ill health, she took some years to graduate and her college principal suggested that she should go to St. Ives for her health where she arrived in March 1940.

Through Mellis and Stokes, she met, and became friends with Ben Nicholson (February 6^{th), Barbara Hepworth (May 20th), Naum Gabo (August 5th) and Sven Berlin (September 11th) and she also met Alfred Wallis (August 29th).  Barns-Graham also became part of the, post-war, St. Ives School of Artists becoming close to Peter Lanyon (August 31st), Terry Frost (September 1st), Bryan Wynter (September 8th), Roger Hilton (April 30th) and Rose Hilton (August 15th).}

In 1947, she married the aspiring poet, David Lewis, with whom she travelled to Paris and Italy before moving to Leeds where Lewis enrolled in the School Architecture (1956). The couple divorced in 1963 and having received an inheritance, she split her time between Scotland and Cornwall.