While in Europe, Roach would send her artwork back to Australia for exhibition with the
Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, The Independent Group, and various Melbourne commercial galleries. Profiled in a magazine article in February 1927 after her return from overseas only weeks before, she is described as: a Melbourne girl who has made herself a place in the artistic world with her craftsmanship in stained wood. Her ware is known by its beautiful glaze. Candlesticks, boxes and the like decorated with floral designs and shining like glass are among her fancies. Just a month or two ago she returned from a three years tour, chiefly on the Continent, and she has added to her repertoire designs in bas-relief and a fine French enamel finish. Though now known chiefly for her stained wood bric-a-brac, of which she is the originator here, she is also painter, and her watercolor sketches of scenes in Italy were hung at the last art show of the year at the Athenæum Gallery. While in France Elma had lessons at a famous arts and crafts school in Paris. She intends to hold an exhibition soon.Her first solo show was at the Fine Art Society in July 1927. In a new venture the Cheyne run by Rene Monteath Roach showed enamelled wood alongside etchings by
John Shirlow, paintings by
Dora Wilson, and pottery of
Merric Boyd. Also in 1927 she exhibited at the
Lyceum Club with
Clara Southern,
Jessie Traill, Dora Wilson and
Elsie Barlow, and in December attended the opening of John Farmer's exhibition at the Athenaeum, then leading up to Christmas that year, with her sister Winifred she exhibited what a
Bulletin reporter considered 'exquisite' woodwork at the Arts and Crafts gallery. The same magazine also noted in September "fine examples of the inlaid woodwork of Elma Roach" in Margaret MacLean's studio and art salon, but in July that year had dismissed her painting as:little above the standard of the good amateur. The lady's drawing is inclined to be woolly, and she employs the same texture for the surface of an alabaster pillar as for a fisherman's pants. Some of her efforts look as if they had been hastily blotted before they were quite dry; still, her sense of design is breezy, and her color frequently harmonious, and when she tightens up her draughtsmanship matters should improve. Roach announced in April 1928 that she was planning another trip to Europe in April, and held a farwell opening of a show of water-color sketches and decorated woodware including panels for overmantels at Cheyne Gallery, 175
Collins Street, during the week alongside her sister's work. By September, it was reported that she and Lillian White were painting in a fishing village in
Brittany. They made rendezvous with Australian artist colleagues
Norah Gurdon, Dora Wilson and
Pegg Clarke, and later Madge Freeman and Margaret MacLean, in London where Roach was undertaking further study, and where her work had been accepted into the
British Academy and the
Women's International Art Club. She sent work to Australia for showing in May 1930 in the
Victorian Artists Society, where her watercolour,
Fading Light was judged as "freshly and cleanly painted" by
Melvyn Skipper of
The Bulletin. She had other work exhibited at the Paris Salon, and at a reception of the National Council of Women attended by 2,500, a watercolour by Roach was presented. Roach returned to Melbourne in January 1936 on the
Moldavia, and with Freeman exhibited their dress clips, brooches and other ornaments first at Roach's studio, 117 Collins Street, then at Freeman's “converted stable” at 144 Gipps Street,
East Melbourne. In 1938 she was represent in the first exhibition of the
Australian Academy of Art in 1938 with her oil painting, priced at 10 guineas,
Street, East Melbourne depicting Freeman's aforementioned studio. Both were featured in
Art in Australia, with mention in an accompanying statement; "Then there are painters like Madge Freeman and Elma Roach, who have brought back with them from Paris still another aspect of contemporary European painting unfamiliar to Australian eyes." Another, a still life in a Cézannesque manner, had earlier appeared in the May edition of
Art in Australia with work by other Australian Academy of Art artists. As Burdett noted, her work was representative of a French influence, and was more at home in George Bell's Contemporary Art Society which countered the Academy's conservatism. She exhibited there in June 1939 with Madge Freeman, Betty Kopsen,
Sybil Craig and
Anne Montgomery, and while a handful of the works were considered 'interesting experiments' by
The Bulletin, some by others were ridiculed as "the work of bad-mannered little schoolboys." Not long before she died, Roach was included in group exhibitions in 1941 and 1942 at The
Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. The former, generally excoriated as "an average display of contemporary academic painting which, like all work done to popular formulae, is dull as ditchwater" by
The Bulletin, only Roach's "attempt at the golds and browns of autumn (a more understandable Gallery buy)" and a
Thea Proctor nude were considered 'original statements;' her work
Autumn was purchased by the
Art Gallery of New South Wales. == Legacy ==