Suzanne Leclair lives and works in Montreal as a psychiatrist affiliated with the Université de Montréal. She trained at Concordia University's Fine Arts Department in Montreal in the early 1980s, and has been active as a painter for many years. In 2016, she joined a working and research group on medical aid in dying (MAID) at the university hospital where she practices, following the implementation of Quebec and Canadian laws regulating this practice.

The creation of Through Clouds of Smoke: Freud’s Final Days was nourished by her knowledge of psychoanalysis and the issues surrounding euthanasia, or medically assisted dying.