She graduated from the Royal College of Art with an Master of Arts, in 1981.
She lives and works in her Kent cottage, producing extremely large paintings on unstretched, unprimed canvas, creating a kind of artlessness. In 2010 Wylie was the only non-American artist represented in the Women to Watch exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington District of Columbia. In 2012, she had a retrospective at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, followed in 2013 by an exhibition at Tate Britain, London that featured recent works. Tate Shots - Rose Wylie (2013)
Jerwood Gallery: An Afternoon with Rose Wylie.
By Adolfo Doring (2013)
At Home with Rose Wylie, Frieze Video.
Wylie was one of the seven finalists for the 2009 Threadneedle Prize, and one of the winners of the 2011 Paul Hamlyn Prize for Visual Arts. In September 2014, she won the John Moores Painting Prize. In June of the same year she won the Charles Wollaston Award for "most distinguished work" in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
In February 2015 she became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (Research Associate Elect).