Lois Woolley is an oil and pastel painter who specializes is traditional portraiture. Her portraits and figurative paintings are known for their classic style, rich color, and expressive mood.
Woolley's public portrait commissions include a Harvard dean and a Hospital Workers Union 1199 executive. She has been featured in New Art International, Northlight's Pure Color: The Best of Pastel, The Pastel Journal, and Hudson Valley Magazine.
She was a fellow of the American Artists Professional League, won Best Portfolio 2004 at the Portrait Society of America, and was the 2005 recipient of the Woodstock Artist Museum's Yasuo Kuniyoshi award. In 2007 she won the prestigious Joseph Giffuni Memorial Award at the Pastel Society of America's annual exhibit.
A native of Washington, DC, Woolley was drawn to portraiture at nine years old. Her desire to paint like her childhood heroes, Rembrandt and Renoir, brought her to New York's Art Students League, where she studied with Robert Brackman, Robert Beverly Hale, Daniel Greene, and David Leffel. Sargent and Velasquez soon were added to her list of favorite masters, and ultimately Ilya Repin became the painter she admired the most.
Always searching to combine full color with strong form, her association with Hongnian Zhang and his unique approach to color led to her current style. She is coauthor with Zhang of The Yin-Yang of Painting.
She teaches portrait painting at the Woodstock School of Art.