Lydia Vercinsky (1918-2001) American, Oil on Canvas. Still life with oleander flowers. Signed lower right. 

Overall: 18 1/4 X 22 1/4 in. 

Sight: 15 1/2 X 19 1/2 in. 

#2768 . 

Lydia Vercinsky (née Kriloff) was born in Harbin, Manchuria on April 7th, 1918, the youngest of three daughters. Encouraged by her father, Kriloff began her formal training in oil painting at age 7, receiving private instruction until the age of 16. One of her earliest teachers was A.N. Klementieff, a graduate of the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture. At 17 Kriloff was admitted to the “Ecole De Dessia” in Paris, France, and graduated three years later with a degree in Commercial Art and Design. When she returned home to Harbin in 1938, the once safe harbor for refugees of the Russian Revolution was about to come under siege by Japanese forces, and the family fled colonial rule, seeking asylum in the United States. They settled in San Francisco, where she attended the School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) from 1940 to 1944, developing her skills in portrait/live-model painting and photography. During World War II, Kriloff was also employed as a draftswoman at the Moore Dry Dock Company in East Oakland and the Mare Island Navy Yard, designing posters and backdrops for movie studios in support of the war effort. Kriloff married Igor Vercinsky in 1943 and became a naturalized citizen a year later in 1944, at the age of 26. During the latter part of the 1940s Vercinsky worked as a commercial artist in the San Francisco area. In the 1950s she was employed by photographic studios and retail shops in San Francisco to retouch black-and-white negatives and hand-color prints. By the beginning of the 1960s she had begun to specialize in painting California landscapes and coastal seascapes, and befriended and studied under Alexander A. Dzigurski. In 1964 Vercinsky retired from selling art commercially and opted to teach private art lessons. She taught at her home in Hayward for 13 years, and then in Danville for 26 more. She was an active member of both the Hayward and Danville Art Associations. Her later work is characterized by an attention to naturalistic detail. Her subject matter was envisioned rather than directly observed, as she almost always chose to work from memory in a studio setting instead of plein air. She passed away on October 13th, 2001, having created over 1000 paintings in her lifetime, at least 300 of which were seascapes.