She went to Methodist College in Belfast and by the age of fourteen she was living in the family home with lodgers as her parents were in Africa where her father was working.

Dillon and Rice would tour junk yards to find objects like leather and string that they included in their artwork.

[2] In 1963 she was part of a delegation of 30 artists invited to represent Ireland on a cultural exchange to the United States where they exhibited in Washington DC and New York.

She had to be persuaded by Gerard Dillon and George Campbell to meet John F Kennedy at the White House at the end of the tour.

[4] She became a regular exhibitor in London and Dublin before moving to Paris in 1967 where she married sculptor Haïm Kern in 1970 and took up lithography.

Jacques Lassaigne, director of Paris's Museum of Modern Art, said she created "a strange and primitive universe, suspended between two skies... in these figures and symbols... one may read the secret of the silent life patiently reconstructed".

She continued to paint and exhibit in Ireland and held regular residencies in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre Annamakerrig in Co. Monaghan.

In 1997 a large collaboration with Felix Anaut resulted in images of Adam and Eve which was prepared for a Spanish arts festival which was near Zaragosa.

She was noted for only creating art when she wanted to, she had never conformed, Aeneas Bonner said in her obituary "Normality was a not a close acquaintance".

The golden thread she grasped brought her to Hong Kong, London, Paris, Geneva and back to her native Ireland in a career spanning more than half a century.