Eileen Lyons is a South Florida-based artist who spent over 25 years as an artist and arts educator in Washington, DC. Her work was uniquely shaped at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in DC, absorbing influences from the Washington Color School, particularly through the work of Sam Gilliam and Alma Thomas.

Raised on Long Island, NY, Lyons developed early connections to the sea. As a teen, her family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, where she continued to interact with water systems, coastal environments and limestone formations. Lyons earned a BFA in painting and sculpture from St. Mary’s College of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. After graduation, Lyons moved to Germany, where she worked as a cartographer for the US Department of Defense. This job profoundly impacted her art, as it trained her to view terrain from a helicopter and guided her ability to translate the world through mapping, land division, and aerial perspective as she studied natural and human-built borders across the European landscape.

After leaving Germany, Lyons moved to Washington, DC, where she earned an MA in Visual Arts from American University. She also completed her secondary teaching certification from the University of Virginia. She dedicated years to visual arts education in the metropolitan DC area. Lyons returned “home” to Florida in 2018 with her studio located in Jupiter.

Lyons’ work experience includes being a Teaching Artist at the National Gallery of Art in DC and at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. In March of 2023, she completed a 4-week residency at Cill Rialaig, Ballinskelligs, Ireland and in October of 2024, Lyons was awarded a 4-week Artist-in-Residence at Studio Works at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine. In August of 2025, Lyons will be Artist-in-Residence at the Historic Mackinac Island State Park in upper Michigan. Lyons is currently working on making connections between these latitudinally related “island” residencies. She is also introducing sculptural elements into her current body of work. Lyons’ work is widely exhibited and held in many private and corporate collections across the US, Canada, and Ireland.