Lillian Orlowsky was born and raised in New York City, where she still currently resides. Appropriately, one of her first exhibitions was at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. In addition to painting, she has acted as a textile designer, a gallery director, a curator and a teacher.

Her paintings are part of the permanent collections at several major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Jerusalem Museum in Israel; the Archives of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC; and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Her work is exhibited as near as Manhattan, Provincetown and Boston and as far away as Copenhagen, Prague and Nimes, France. She continues to paint, lecture and curate.