Turner began her studies in schools in her native Kansas City and graduated from Stanford University, California, with distinction in 1936. She then attended the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, where she received a diploma in 1941. She earned a master's degree in fine arts from Claremont [California] Graduate College in 1947 and a doctorate in education from Teacher's College at Columbia University, New York, in 1960. While teaching at the Stephen Austin State College in Texas in 1948 she became interested in printmaking, which remained a life-long interest for her.
In 1952 she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship that allowed her to investigate wildlife themes. She soon became fairly widely known for her realistic depictions of animals in their natural habitats.
Turner joined the faculty of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Chico ***, in 1959 and was advanced to full professor there in 1968.
She received several awards from the National Association of Women Artists as well as the Gladys Emerson Cook Prize at the NAD. Her work is in public collections such as the Dallas Museum of Fine Art; the Library of Congress; the San Francisco Museum of the Fine Arts; the Seattle Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum; Smith College Art Museum, Northampton, Massachusetts; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
She was a member of the California Watercolor Society, the Society of American Graphic Artists, and the Society of American Graphic Artists, among others.
