Holbrow first studied commercial art in the mid-1980s, at the Madison Area Technical College in Madison, WI, but it would be some time before her creative focus turned strongly to art. In 1989, she and her husband moved their family to Frankfurt, Germany, and while there, Holbrow did professional graphic-arts work, received classical voice training, and involved herself in the local choral and opera community. During a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 1998, Holbrow realized Von Gogh's student art was as primitive and problematic, as the paintings on which she was then laboring; perhaps hers held some promise as well. Her serious study of fine art began at this point. Returning to America in 1998, Holbrow earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art in 2001 from Framingham State College in Massachusetts, and soon after started teaching art herself at the Danforth Museum.