Painter and teacher. She studied at Reading University, 1968–72, and Royal Academy Schools, 1974–7. From 1973 she taught in Kent schools and education centres. Fountain won a number of prizes and awards, which included a bursary from the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, in 1975, also the David Murray Studentship for Landscape Painting. She won the Studentship again in 1976, the year she won the Richard Jack Award for Portraiture. In 1977 she gained the British Institution’s First Prize for Drawing and a first prize in the Observer Jubilee Print Competition. The Italian Government bursary for landcape painting and study of art history, which took her to Perugia, was won in 1978, three years before winning the Richard Ford Award to study in the Prado Museum, Madrid.