Virginia Lee Biography

Virginia Lee is a young sculptor and painter from Chagford, Devon, UK. She creates extraordinary surrealist sculptures and beautiful pastel paintings. Virginia recently produced highly detailed art for the world-renowned film Lord of the Rings.

Virginia was born into a family of artists in a small Dartmoor village in 1976. Her father, Alan Lee, is an acclaimed English book artist (winner of the Kate Greenaway Award); her mother, Marja Lee Kruyt, is a Dutch artist and musician; her younger brother, Owen, is a weaver.

Virginia grew up surrounded by the images of myths and fairy tales, and found beauty and inspiration in the Devon countryside. As a young girl, she posed for her father's work, as well as for "faery painter" Brian Froud, a close family friend and neighbor. (She played the young Lady Cottington in photographs for Brian's Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, and in a promotional video for the book made by Brian and Terry Jones. She also appears in photographs in Lady Cottington's Fairy Album.)

As a teenager, she worked in the doll-making studio of Wendy Froud, sculpting accessories for dolls that were sold and collected internationally. Virginia studied Art and Design at Exeter College, and Illustration at Kingston University, receiving her degree from the latter in 1999.

As part of her Degree Show, she created a stunning series of pastel paintings titled Inner Seasons, about a young girl's journey into womanhood, which she is now turning into a book.

She then went to work as a sculptor on the set of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, in Wellington, New Zealand. She is currently back in England, creating art for publication and exhibition.