Shaw studied painting and drawing under Fernand Léger, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, though she was mainly self-taught and worked professionally until the early 1980s.

Her works are represented in private collections but recently her pen and ink drawing of the poet David Gascoyne has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London.

From 1946 onwards, the artist had several solo and group exhibitions in galleries of contemporary Art in London, Rome and New York.

The artist attended, before the outbreak of the Second World War, drawing classes under Fernand Léger and studied sculpture with Ossip Zadkine in Paris.

[2][3][4] On her return to London in September, 1939, Shaw-Lawrence met David Kentish and Lucian Freud[5] both students at Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines' East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing.

This encounter enabled her to spend the summer of 1940 studying under the artist Cedric Morris and though she returned to the School at Benton End near Hadleigh, Suffolk, for short spells during the war, Shaw-Lawrence mainly painted in Richmond-upon-Thames.

In 1958 Shaw-Lawrence left England to move to Italy where her oils on canvas became more luminous and serene though her work " might be sets for very sophisticated doll dramas".

In 1948, The Penguin New Writing n°33 edited by John Lehmann published two of her works from this exhibition: 'Richmond Bridge' (oil) and 'Boy with a Donkey' (coloured inks).

[16][17] 1975 - Wivenhoe Arts Club - Wivenhoe (Essex) "An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Bettina Shaw-Lawrence opened at the club on Saturday evening and among the guests was Mr Arthur Lett-Haines, one of the leaders of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing where Miss Shaw-Lawrence studied many years ago.

On this occasion, her portrait entitled 'Portrait with a Rose' was selected for the cover of The Listener to announce a BBC radio programme on the trompe-l'œil style of art, dated February 3, 1955.

[19] The Bodley catalogue dated 1963, confirms that when Bettina Shaw-Lawrence lived in Rome, Italy (1959–1967) her works were exhibited " at the Obelisco and Gallery 88".

This was her last exhibition and it had taken place in a gallery located close to Benton End where she had always longed to be during the war years and would "always remember the lovely times I've had down there".