Susan Gilbert is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she received a year of classical art training followed by three years of intensive drawing and ceramics. During that time and in the years since she has pursued the study of painting on porcelain, paper and canvas. She taught ceramics for many years at Tufts University, Chamberlayne Junior College and Cambridge Community Center.

Gilbert has further studied oil painting with Don Stone, Ralph Bush, Bill Maloney and Janet Manyan; watercolor with Dewitt Hardy and Guy Corriero; and drawing with Anthony Venti.
A native of Schenectady, N.Y., she arrived on Monhegan in the late 1960s and is a year-round resident of the island.