Susan Bennerstrom was born in Seattle in 1949.  She studied art studio and art history at Western Washington University for three years and dropped out in order to travel extensively.  She returned to WWU in her late 60s to obtain her BFA.  She lives and works in Bellingham WA.

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Bennerstrom began exhibiting while living in Berkeley in the early 1970s and has never stopped.  She has worked in chalk pastels, oil pastels, oil on canvas, intaglio printmaking, and has recently begun drawing in ink, colored pencil, monotype, and watercolor.

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Her work has been shown regionally and nationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions.  Her paintings are included in the collections of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Virginia Mason Hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center (all in Seattle), the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Western Washington University, and St Joseph Hospital in Bellingham, the Museum of Northwest Art in LaConner WA, the Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art in County Mayo, Ireland, and numerous other public and private collections.

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Bennerstrom has been the recipient of a number of awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, Artist Trust's SOLA Award, three Artist Trust GAP Awards, Seattle Art Museum's Betty Bowen Special Recognition Award, and the Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship.

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Seattle's Davidson Galleries, along with the University of Washington Press published the monograph Susan Bennerstrom in 2000, with essays by Sarah Clark Langager, Rod Slemmons, and Robin Updike.