Sujata Gopalan was born in India and immigrated with my family to the United States at the age of three. Her parents came to the United States to study at Washington University in St. Louis, and then both went on to become academicians at various institutions in the Midwest.
She first attended Boston University as a painting student,but decided to study printmaking after seeing a print retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago one summer. She returned to Indiana to study with Marvin Lowe, Rudy Pozzati, and Wendy Calman at Indiana University, and then went on to complete and MFA in printmaking at Louisiana State University.
Although she found print media to be at once challenging and rewarding, its lack of immediacy compelled her too often work in other media, specifically drawing, which is her first love, and painting, where she found the most room for growth.