Bettina Shaw-Lawrence studied painting and drawing under Fernand Léger, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. David Gascoyne, the Surrealist poet, was her mentor and she was close friends with David Kentish and Lucian Freud both students at Morris and Lett-Haines' East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing.

She exhibited:
1947 Leicester Galleries, London (in 1948, The Penguin New Writing n°33 edited by John Lehmann published two of her works from this exhibition)
1953 Hanover Gallery, London;
1955 Arthur Jeffress Gallery
1963 Bodley Gallery, 223 East 60th Street, New York
also showed at Reid & Lefèvre Gallery and the Léger Gallery.