Born on 11 October in 1954, Lena Virginia Kilpatrick began making arts and crafts when she was very young. Kilpatrick was raised, along with her four brothers and two sisters, on a farm near a small town in Tennessee. The family made do with the little money that they had, and any luxuries or accessories had to be made by hand. Her mother even sewed all the dresses Kilpatrick wore, often based only on a photo in a catalog. Kilpatrick attributes her talent and hard-working attitude to her mother: “I feel that what talent I have I inherited from my mother.”

In addition to her natural talent, Kilpatrick fostered a passion for drawing and painting since her early childhood, although she never really acted on it. She married at only fourteen years old and spent the next three and a have decades raising two sons and a grandson. It was only when she was 40 years old that Kilpatrick because really exploring her talents and passions as an artist. Primarily self-taught, she paints Realist and Impressionist figures, still lifes and landscapes and uses a wide range of media, including acrylics, oils, and watercolors. While her subjects may sound simplistic or trite, Kilpatrick lends her own touch to them, depicting every-day things in bright colors and strong contrasts, giving them life on canvas. She has also begun exploring other styles, particularly those of the Fauvist and Abstract movements

Kilpatrick’s work has been well-received both in the United States and abroad and her paintings can be found in private and corporate collections in Australia, Italy, France, Canada, Ireland, and Saudi Arabia.