Adjusting Our Focus

Lilian Burwell is an artist, educator, curator, and Catholic University alumna whose work bridges painting and sculpture. Born in 1927, she grew up in Washington, DC, surrounded by artists: her father was a photographer, her mother an artist, and both were art educators. Her aunt, Hilda Wilkenson Brown, was also a well-known painter. Burwell attended Dunbar High School, earned a B.A. from DC Teachers College, and later received a Master of Fine Arts from The Catholic University of America in 1975.

Burwell creates both two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional wall sculptures using various materials including wood, canvas, plexiglass, and paint. Following her mother’s death, Burwell shifted toward creating organic, curved three-dimensional wall sculptures, following the shape of the wood grain. She stretches canvas over these pieces, paints them, and assembles them to create dynamic compositions with depth and movement. Burwell describes her work as “an expression and a reflection of the history of her own reactions and experiences.” (https://www.burwellstudios.com/)

“My art is not only what comes through me. It is what you see in it that I may not even realize. It finds its life in this coming together.”

A key figure in Washington’s artistic community, Burwell was friends with fellow artists Alma Thomas and Sylvia Snowden (both featured here). She is also deeply engaged in curatorial and educational work, serving as the founding director of the Alma Thomas Memorial Gallery, curatorial director of the Sumner Museum and Archives, and a curator at the Banneker-Douglass Museum.

As an educator, she developed arts curricula for DC Public Schools, taught at the Pratt Institute in New York City, served as an adjunct professor at Anne Arundel Community College, and was the head of the visual arts department at the Duke Ellington School of Arts. 

Her work is held in major collections, including the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, the Hampton University Museum, and The Phillips Collection.