Where you see a grey wall behind a bleak shopping centre, she sees a concrete canvas on which to spray joy.

Graffiti sprayers get into trouble for destroying public property like trams - and then declining to pick up the bill from the taxpayers - but she uses the 27 designated spaces in the ACT and leaves a riot of skilfully applied colour.

She arrives at the "legal graffiti practice site" behind the Canberra Centre on Cooyong Street with the tools of her art, about 20 spray cans plus a pot of bright blue paint to roll on to the wall as her blank sheet.

Over two hours, she transforms the space into a portrait of one of her friends, working off a photograph on her phone, stepping back every so often to look at (literally) the big picture.

She is studying art and sociology at ANU and paints conventional paintings as well as murals.

"There is a living in street art and spray painting. There's an increasingly high demand," she says.

"I've sold hardly any classical paintings but I've done countless murals and countless street art pieces for companies, businesses and the government."

She's done work for a coffee shop in Fyshwick and Sancho's Dirty Laundry (more a trendy meeting place than a washer of grubby underpants).

The government also commissions her to brighten up streets, sometimes for a particular purpose or event.

For International Women's Day, for example, she did a mural in Garema Place with a bunch of 13- and 14-year-old girls.

"They got to learn a new technique and they got to achieve something really cool," she says.

"And as we painted it, passersby were walking past. They were interested and they were engaged."

But is she satisfied with her work behind the Canberra Centre?

She isn't exactly over the moon.

"It'll probably make the most sense to say I'm proud," she says, before adding doubt.

"But everything's a work in process. I'm never fully content with something.

"I'm always trying to improve myself and improve my work."