Alice Spencer was born in Colorado in 1944 and grew up on the East Coast. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and continued her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has lived and worked in Maine over the last 30 years.

During her career she has worked in a variety of mediums including watercolor, acrylics and oils. She is a printmaker focusing primarily on the technique of monotype. In recent years she has pioneered a form of low relief sculpture using a sandblasted foam signboard.

Over the last 35 years, Spencer has had 19 one-person exhibits. Her work has been shown extensively throughout Maine, New England and New York and was featured in exhibits at the United States embassies in the Chile and Bosnia Herzegovina. She was one of 10 women painters exhibited at the United Nations "Ingredients for Peace" Celebration held in New York in March 2001. Her paintings and prints are included in numerous museum and corporate collections including the Portland Museum of Art, the Colby College Museum of Art, Simmons College, United Technologies and the UNUM Corporation.

Spencer is a co-founder of Peregrine Press, a printmaking cooperative in Portland. She has taught printmaking in the Maine College of Art Continuing Studies Program and at the Haystack School of Crafts in Deer Isle. She has served on the Board of the Maine College of Art and as chairman of the City of Portland Public Art Committee. Spencer resides in Portland. She is married to Richard Spencer, a Portland attorney, and has three grown children.