DELEVORYAS
Lilian

Lillian Delevoryas was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, USA. In 1970 she moved to England and has made this country her adopted home. Her initial art training in the ‘50’s was in New York, 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. Now in her ‘70’s, Lillian’s repertoire covers a vast area, spanning over 50 years as an artist, which began in New York the ‘50’s and ‘60’s with large interiors with nudes. When she came to London in 1970, her work shifted to appliqué wall hangings and appliqué garments for the world of show business. During this period she produced many wall hangings and tapestries for private individuals as well as churches and public spaces. In 1972, she married the writer Robin Amis, and they 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 which was formed in partnership with Kaffe Fassett. The work produced from Kaffe's and Lillian's designs and stitched into tapestries won many awards and were exhibited widely in such places as the V & A Queens Jubilee exhibition, as well as the Royal College of Art and ‘Threads of History’ at Courtauld House. In the ‘80’s, the floral watercolours spun off into 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 90’s, she 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. From the ‘90’s onwards, she was influenced more and more 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 as well as to sharpen her own technique in painting. This gradually led to a series of works which combined the iconesque image with images of the world. With all this behind her, when asked what the 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 return to these subjects in order to perfect them. In a way, it’s a kind of Proustian ‘Remembrance of things past’, where in memory, the event or subject is crystallized – stripped of everything but its essentials.”