Having begun her education at a convent in Exmouth, Frink studied at Guildford and Chelsea schools of art between 1947 and 1953, where Bernard Meadows and Willi Soukop were her tutors. She herself went on to teach at Chelsea (1953-60) and St Martin's School of Art (1955-7).
Frink came to maturity as a young sculptor in the mid-Fifties, encouraged from the very outset of her professional career by the attentive if not always respectful climate of support established for British sculpture internationally by Henry Moore. Before the Second World War, the only sculptures broadly visible to the general public in England were war memorials, equestrian statues or the occasional commemorative municipal plaque. Artists like Jacob Epstein, Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Maurice Lambert, Frank Dobson and Leon Underwood were confined to very small dealers' galleries, a tiny public and the odd leaden spoof among the cartoons in Punch.
Frink achieved commercial success at a young age when, in 1952, Beaux Arts Gallery in London held her first major solo exhibition and the Tate Gallery purchased one work entitled 'Bird'. This marked the beginning of a highly acclaimed career in which Frink earned a reputation as one of Britain's most important post-war sculptors.
Frink's unique sculptural style is characterised by a rough treatment of the surface, so that each piece is richly embedded with the artist's creative process and personal impression. At the same time, these highly textured surfaces project the vitality of her subject, giving Frink's sculpture an almost abstract quality.