Printmaker and painter Genevieve Roberts was born Genevieve Ruth Lugar on May 16, 1920 in Cory, Colorado. She showed an early passion for art, teaching herself how to draw as a child. Her formal art education began in 1939 at the University of Denver, CO for a year before life was interrupted by the war. She married U.S. Airforce office Thomas C. Roberts and attended school wherever he was stationed, including the University of Tampa from 1942-'43, and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. from 1944-'45. She earned her BFA from American University in Washington, D.C. in 1948 and her MFA at American University in 1959. Between these instances, Thomas's military career took them and their two children to China, Europe, Morocco, Mexico, and Costa Rica. From 1961 to 1965 they lived in London, where she studied at the Sir John Cass School of Art from 1962-'63. She held her first solo exhibition at London's The Artist's Own Gallery on Regent Street in 1965.

After returning oto the U.S. Roberts began exhibiting throughout the U.S. from Washington D.C. to Colorado. She also participated in and taught in art workshops throughout the East Coast and the Midwest, including at the Smithsonion American Art Museum. Around 1970 she took a position as an art teacher at West Spring Field High in Virginia where she founded the school's first printmaking program. She and her family settled in Ashton, Marlyand in 1977 and Roberts was able to open her own studio and workshop space, which she maintained until well into her nineties.

Roberts was a member of the Arts Council of Montgomery County, MD (Board of Directors, Selection Committee); the Washington Society of Landscape Painters; Washington Print Club, the Washington Printmakers, and the Miniature Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers Society of Washington, D.C.; and the Maryland Printmakers, and taught in the art program of the Rosmoor Art Guild at Leisure World in Silver Spring, MD. 

Her work is held in the collections of the Pushkin Museum and the Cheremeteff Collection, Moscow, Russia; the U.S. Library of Congress Division of Prints and Drawings, the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the National Gallery of Art Corcoran Print Collection, and the Georgetown University Print Collection, Washington, D.C; the Montgomery County MD Permanent Collection, Rockville, MD; the Portland Museum of Fine Art, OR; and many others. 

Genevieve Ruth Roberts died at the age of 103 on April 1, 2024.