Laguardia, 1991

About the artist:

During her long and productive career as an artist, Lillian mastered many techniques, media and styles from oils to pastels and watercolours, from painting to appliqué and collage, and from landscapes to still-life, interiors and iconography.

She was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, USA to Greek parents who had recently emigrated from the Peloponnese. Her initial art training was in New York in the 1950s at Pratt Institute and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. After graduation, she travelled and studied extensively in Japan, France and Greece before returning to New York to produce many large interiors with nudes.

In 1970 she moved to England and made this country her adopted home. In London the focus of her work shifted to fabric appliqué and during this period she produced many wall hangings and tapestries for private individuals, churches and public spaces as well as garments for the world of show business. When, in 1972, she married the writer Robin Amis, her skill in appliqué was used to stunning effect on her own wedding dress which was subsequently exhibited at the V&A museum in London.

After their marriage, Lillian and Robin moved to the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. This marked the beginning of her long and fruitful association with the English garden whose profusion of colour reinforced her already strong love of pattern. The watercolours produced during this period quickly translated into designs, and formed the basis of a tapestry needlepoint workshop formed in partnership with Kaffe Fassett. The work produced from Kaffe’s and Lillian’s designs and stitched into tapestries won many awards and was widely exhibited in such places as the V&A Queen’s Jubilee exhibition, the Royal College of Art and ‘Threads of History’ at Courtauld House.

In the 1980s, the floral watercolours inspired further areas of applied design including a range of fabrics and wall paper for Designers Guild, ceramics for Habitat and Royal Doulton, and cards for Elgin Court. In the 1990s, Lillian returned for a sojourn to her native Massachusetts, and during that period produced a series of landscapes inspired by the marshlands and tidal estuaries of the coastline.

Lillian’s work now began to be more and more influenced by the icons of Greece and Russia and for several years, devoted herself to learning the techniques of iconography in order to penetrate its secrets and sharpen her own painting technique. This gradually led to a series of works which combined spiritual iconic images with images of the world.

With all this behind her, when asked, towards the end of her life, what her next step would be, she replied ‘To review my past history as an artist and to draw from each period the most important aspects which can still feed my current work, and to return to these subjects in order to perfect them’.

This is exactly what Lillian accomplished when, in the final year of her life, she produced a series of eighty works on Mary Magdalene, which she felt was the culmination of her artistic legacy. Although unable to paint due to a shoulder operation, Lillian used collage to combine her past artwork with other images: ‘As the series evolved I began to feel that these works were the target to which all my years as a painter were pointing – that all the techniques and methods I had explored formed the means by which I could best express this subject [Mary Magdalene]’.

Some of the results of Lillian’s seventy years of remarkable productivity are shown on this website and we hope that you enjoy sharing in her artistic legacy.

Bio sourced from: https://lilliandelevoryas.net/a-life-in-art/