Priest's artistic practice of 50 years includes painting, print-making, sculpture and public art projects, and she is known and recognized for drawing the interiors and exteriors of the modern, urban built environment.

Priest is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, where she taught in the School of Fine Art and Music from 1983 to 2001, and has guest lectured extensively in Canada, England and the United States.

Priest was born at Tyringham Hall, England, then a war-time maternity hospital for people evacuated from the bombing of London in World War II.

[8] In October 2019, the Art Gallery of Ontario mounted an exhibition of her work focused around the recently acquired suite of prints for The Monument to Construction Workers.

[10] Griselda Pollock has noted Priest's choice of drawing as a medium as a conscious decision to embrace a typically feminine art form on her own terms.

[11] Modern and aspirational architecture of the international style has been a primary interest for Priest as well as the democratic aspect of public housing in the British reconstruction phase after World War II.

[13] Critic and art historian Bernard Denvir has observed that Priest's drawings of architecture are resonant with the human aspects of the built environment.

Woodley have described the long creative process of the artist, building on painstakingly observed photographs combined with her own memories, and making interventions into the architectural space through the eventual drawing.

[citation needed] Art historian Linda Norden observed the tactile aspects of these works, which she saw as reflecting the importance of materiality and place.

The panels began as Priest’s geometric composition drawings of materials and methods used in each of the professional construction trades, such as carpentry, concrete work, and pipe-fitting.

Linda Norden described the unique conditions and approach of the process of creating this work, in which Priest directed the activity of around 40 trade workers, all male, subverting the usual gender dynamic of construction.