Born Glasgow. works in oil and mixed media. Studied drawing and painting at Glasgow School of Art 1969-1973 and from 1974-76 enrolled at Glasgow University reading history of art. A scholarship enabled her to visit Rome in 1977 where the classical iconography, together with limited colour range of the frescoes at Pompeii and Herculaneum, influenced her future. Her first one woman exhibition was at Stirling in 1978. 'Her early work is minimal and non-figurative but, from about 1980, she began incorporating classical lettering and archaeological imagery into her work. Roman urns and columns together with Celtic and Pictish signs were employed to create a symbolism suggestive of ancient myths and cultures' [Crawford Centre catalogue]. In 1978 she moved to London, returning to Scotland in 1982-3 becoming the artist-in-residence at St Andrews University. In 1984-5 she was artist-in-residence at the Whitechapel AG in London. Since 1983 much of her work has been large scale, executed in a limited but bright colour range created for particular spaces. In 1987 she produced three large landworks for Calton Hill, Edinburgh, reminiscent of prehistoric images such as the Cerne Abbas Giant. These were composed of white stone chippings laid in a shallow trench describing fish and spiral motifs. In 2018, the Brontë Parsonage commissioned Whiteford to create a work about Emily Brontë's hawk Nero, resulting in a video installation accompanied by a series of works on paper.
Represented in the SNGMA.

The Maze Series are red and green paintings that experiment with two ideas – the familiar symbology of displaced yet culturally significant signs and that of colours seemingly bouncing off each other. Combined, these ideas collaborate to offer a new meaning to Whiteford’s work. The jarring complimentaries which resist the central focus are an intentional device creating movement on the margins of vision, and in this way drawing attention to the act of looking. This play on perception and memory is a central concern of Whiteford’s work. By burning the images onto the retina, so that they remain for that instant of closing the eyes, Whiteford gives life to these signs, and scores their eternal significance into our memory.