 Born in Brooklyn, New York, Sirlin attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School and earned a BA in Art from the State University of New York at Albany (1978).While at SUNY, Sirlin studied painting under Mark Greenwald and art history with Ann Sutherland Harris.Sirlin earned an MFA in Painting from Queens College, City University of New York (1980), where she studied under artists Gabriel Laderman, Charles Cajori, Benny Andrews, and Clinton Hill, and art critic Robert Pincus-Witten.