She graduated from Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen and married the psychiatrist Dr James McLauchlan Johnston of Shetland extraction in 1934.

Elizabeth wrote six books, made a number of documentary films, drew many portraits in pastel and charcoal and painted many landscapes, latterly mainly of Shetland and Cullen.

In the early 1950s Elizabeth travelled alone to Pakistan, particularly to Karachi and the Frontier with Afghanistan, where she stayed for several years, resulting in The Waterless Moon (1955) and Peacocks and Pipelines (1958), both of which received some critical acclaim.

Here she made a documentary film of the effects of the flooding on wildlife - Logging in the Sundarbans, East Pakistan - and wrote the story of a colourful Scottish Game and Tsetse Supervisor called Joe McGregor Brooks entitled Elephant Valley (1962).

In February 2002, The Scotsman newspaper ran a story on Elizabeth and her two film-making, travelling, writing peers, Isobel Wylie Hutchison and Jenny Gilbertson.