Early Works 1930 - 1940

Bettie Cilliers-Barnard enrolled for a BA-degree at the University of Pretoria in 1935 and completed the degree after three years in 1937. In 1938 she began her career as an art teacher at the Innesdale Intermediary School. From 1939 she was lecturer in art at the "Normaalkollege" in Pretoria for three years, where she taught art to future art teachers.

She held her first solo exhibition at the old extramural building of the University of Pretoria in Vermeulen Street in 1946. In 1948 she went to Belgium and France to study further at the Koninklike Academie voor Schone Kunsten and Hogere Instituten in Antwerp under Professor Julian Creytens and at the Atelier André L'Hôte in Paris. With her return to South Africa in 1949, her long association with the South African Association of Arts started when she was elected to the Executive of the Northern Transvaal Branch.