Confined at home with measles at age 12, she began passing the time on the family farm painting with whatever materials she could find at hand.

Her teacher, Mrs. Miller, hung them in the classroom, which also happened to be used once a week by an adult art class sponsored by the University of Alberta in Edmonton Extension Program, led by a local artist, Laura Evans Reid, who noticed Sarafinchan’s work and encouraged her to join her art class.

[citation needed] After graduation, Sarafinchan was asked by Harley Parker, another painting instructor at OCA, to join him and Marshall McLuhan in their redesign and new approach to exhibitions at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto.

Sarafinchan’s main responsibility was to work with the trades in executing the ideas generated by the three of them in fulfilling their mandate to bring a more exciting, new, contemporary draw to the museum.

In 1966, she was asked if she would like to hang a few of her works in the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house (where she had become a member and had lived while at Art College).

She had by then entered the film business... first in continuity and eventually as a production designer (picking up a Genie along the way, for "Dancing in the Dark").