[5] During her married life, Fahey, McDonald, and their three daughters lived in houses on the grounds of psychiatric institutions in Australia and New Zealand,[5][6] including the Carrington Hospital.

[1] When she was 26, she exhibited her first paintings with suburbia and marriage as their theme at Harry Seresin's Coffee Gallery on Lambton Quay in Wellington, where she was working as a waitress.

[11] Specifically, Fahey wanted to "find out what circumstances helped women artists to survive in a male-dominated profession in New York".

[15] Fahey joined Robert Ellis (artist), Don Binney, and Dick Frizell on the painting staff and enjoyed the experience of teaching, learning alongside her students, and sharing ideas with her colleagues.

[1] Fahey is credited as being one of the first painters in New Zealand to paint from a female perspective and examine the domestic subjects of contemporary women's existence: children, the home, marriage, community life, and relationships.

"[20] Owing to their subject matter and approach, Fahey's paintings are closely associated with the wider societal women's liberation and feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s.

[21] During many of her years as a practicing artist, Fahey did not have a studio, but instead painted on a large trolley, surrounded by the activities and energy of her family and household and following the action as it unfolded.

[8][6] As such, Fahey's paintings depict the detail, disorder and minutiae of domestic life, but simultaneously disrupt it, by playing with perspective and space within and across the image's frame.

The oil painting Christine in the Pantry (1973), held in the collection of Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru, is an example of Fahey's manipulation of space, patterning, and depiction of everyday, prosaic objects.

In her work, Fahey also combines paint with collaged elements, such as the labels of food packaging, photographs, and other ephemera.

For example, see the combination of Tanqueray and Schweppes labels, and photographs, in the painting "Mother and daughter quarrelling" (1977) from the collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

In the opening essay in the catalogue for the exhibition "alter/image", staged in 1993, curators Christina Barton and Deborah Lawler-Dormer write that Fahey's "disruptions operate not only 'within' the world of the picture, but also 'at' the surface, where representational registers collect and clash.

"[27] Throughout her career Fahey has expressed a strong commitment to both the local environment and politics of Aotearoa New Zealand and to her figurative style.