Born in Slough, Saunders studied at the Slade School of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. She first exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1914, and the following year her work appeared in BLAST, the Vorticist magazine led by Wyndham Lewis, while she also contributed to a London Group exhibition. From the late 1910s onward she gradually distanced herself from Vorticism and abstraction, developing a more realistic and figurative approach.