Christine Rooney was born in Springfield, Ohio and grew up on a small farm. It was here that her love for broad bands of color, horizon lines, and quiet landscapes began. After graduating in fine arts from The Ohio State University in 1970, Ms. Rooney worked as a landscape artist for an architectural design firm in Palo Alto, California. While in California, she also studied art at San Jose State University and Foothill College.

In 1974, she and her husband moved back to the East Coast. She resumed graduate studies at West Chester State University in Pennsylvania and later at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. It was during this time that she began working as a freelance artist. She now teaches art classes and workshops in drawing, pastel, and encaustic painting and lectures in those mediums.

Ms. Rooney works in her studio near the Blue Ridge Mountains where she works in a variety of arts: silverpoint, graphite, encaustics, pastels and experimental mediums. In the summer of 2003, she joined four artists in a working studio at the Riverview Artspace in downtown Lynchburg. She lives in Lynchburg with her husband, Michael. They have two children.