Design and Art Australia Online

Mavis Tilley was born Melbourne 15 July 1916. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Melbourne in 1937 before enrolling in art studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. There she studied under John Rowell and Murray Griffin (among others) for five years. Tilley also trained in Japanese language and during the war worked as a translator for the military. She painted dioramas at the Museum of Melbourne where she met, and subsequently, married Donald Vernon in 1945. The couple relocated to Brisbane the following year where her husband was employed as a preparator at the Queensland Museum for many years.

Vernon lived at first at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane and, as she was constrained by the duties of wife and mother, many of her subjects at this time, are of her locality. Especially notable are paintings which feature the Story Bridge. During the 1950s she exhibited in the HC Richards Prize at the Queensland National Art Gallery and Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise. The demands of her family on her time then precluded her continuing with oil painting after the 1950s so watercolours became Venon’s focus throughout a long productive life. She exhibited with the Half Dozen Group of Artists from 1954 as Mavis Tilley changing her name to her married name, Vernon, in 1964 and continued exhibiting into the 1990s.

Research Curator, Queensland Heritage

Writers:

Cooke, Glenn

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011