About Lauren
Lauren A. Mills has won national acclaim as a sculptor, painter, and as a book author and illustrator. She has illustrated the children’s classics, At the Back of the North Wind, Anne of Green Gables and Thumbelina. The Rag Coat was her first original story. It received the Charlotte Award, thirteen state awards, has been told over the radio, has been performed as a ballet by the University of Utah,
and received the Smithsonian’s “Season’s Choice” award. Fairy Wings, written by Lauren, and co-illustrated with Dennis Nolan, won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award. The New York Times described her watercolors as “alluring... Whistlerian to the point of Pre-Raphaelitism.” Her book illustrations are included in the collections of Keene State University, University of Connecticut at Storrs, and the Mazza Collection, Finlay, Ohio.
Lauren Mills was trained in traditional methods passed down by the masters of the European Renaissance. Her work is greatly influenced by the 19th century artists and the Pre-Raphaelites for their focus of the natural world as well as their sense of mythical wonder. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, libraries, and museums across the country including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where she was the key note speaker for the exhibition, Lyman Allen Art Musem, Radcliffe College, Barnum Museum, and the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts. Her sculpture, “Legacy” is installed at the Heritage Park Trail, Lake Winona, Indiana, and “Ebeneezer Reflecting” is in the permanent collection at the Salmagundi Club in NYC. Lauren Mills is an elected member of the National Sculpture Society, the National Sculptors’ Guild, the Salmagundi Club, and the Western Massachusetts Society of Illustrators. Mills was invited to participate in the 8th exhibition of the Florence Biennale in Florence, Italy.
Lauren Mills, a long time resident of western Massachusetts, grew up in Connecticut, Oregon, and Minnesota. She studied art, literature, and psychology at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and painting and sculpture at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Connecticut. She received a BA in Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara and Master’s degree in Book Illustration from San Jose State University. Mills also studied sculpture three years total at the Lyme Academy of Fine Art and egg tempera in Europe and the United States. Mills also studied classical drawing and painting from the ateliers: Grand Central Academy in NYC, and the Bay Area Classical Art Atelier in California. Lauren has taught at the Paier College of Art and at the Lyme Academy of Fine Art, both in Connecticut, and privately in Massachusetts.