Zena trained as an illustrator and typographer at Chelsea 1949-53, before attending the Central School of Art, 1953-55, where she concentrated on etching. She was a founder member of Printers Inc, an intaglio workshop. In the 1990’s she described her work as “a response to a place – buildings, landscape and more recently, gardens.” “…natural movement and light has become a prime concern”. She began to mix media on her etchings plates, using embossing and collagraph methods in addition to traditional acid biting, which “results in the etching plate becoming a piece of low-relief sculpture”.