Born in Johannesburg, she gained her BA Fine Arts (Hons) at WITS University in 1990, became an arts activist and co-founded the Ratanda Arts Project (RAP!) in an informal settlement near Heidelberg providing arts activities for children deprived through apartheid of arts education. From 1992 onwards she free-lanced as an artist in London UK, worked and travelled in Europe, and in 1994-5 achieved her PG Dip Art Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths, University of London.