Painter and draughtsman, born at Belstead Park, near Ipswich, although soon after her birth the family moved to East Bergholt. She wanted to be a pianist, but an operation went wrong, leaving her right side partly paralysed, so she turned to painting, attending the Slade School of Fine Art prior to World War I. When Cedric Morris opened the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, in 1937, Harwood, still unmarried and living at home, became a student, which she remained, moving to be near the School when it relocated at Benton End, Hadleigh, in 1940. She was a key figure in its social life. Her pictures, painted with her left hand, were spontaneous, innocent and colourful, still life and landscapes of Suffolk around her home at Upper Layham.