Further to her training at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Willis moved to Greece and established an etching workshop on the island of Syros, affiliated to The Aegean School of Art. Although she returned to the UK in 1978, setting up the Moorland House Workshop from where she taught residential courses in printmaking, Willis maintained a love of travelling and it perhaps is for her watercolour paintings of far flung places that she is chiefly celebrated.
Willis currently lives and working in the West of England. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and regularly contributes to group exhibitions at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol where she was elected as an Academician in 1993. Tutoring always alongside her own practice, she has also published several very successful books on painting techniques.
