Serena Dugan

The Style Files: Conversations with Creatives

Serena Dugan is an artist and textile designer based in Sausalito, California. With an education in both Psychology and Fine Art, Serena has spent the past 20 years developing her imprint as a painter, product designer, and Chief Creative Officer of Serena & Lily, the home and lifestyle brand she launched in 2004. In 2016, Serena stepped away from Serena & Lily to get back to her roots as an artist. While painting, she explored shapes and rhythms in her compositions, which she could not help but envision in pattern form. This is the inspiration for her new line of textiles, wallpapers, paintings, and objects for Serena Dugan Studio. The new collection will debut in select showrooms and online at www.serenadugan.com in early 2020. Serena’s rallying belief is in the power of art to transform an environment into an experience. This can take the form of an energetic painting or a striking pattern that defines and enlivens a space. Her background in both mediums allows her to toggle between the two as she explores the themes of rhythm and form. With pattern, her focus is on creating harmony through repetition, shape and placement. With painting, she creates impact through layering and composition. Each art form sharpens the other by means of opposition — both equally representative of her aesthetic fingerprint. Serena received her BA in Psychology from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC in 1994. She returned to school to pursue a BFA in 1997 and then expanded her design education by studying textile design and printmaking. Starting Art School in Denver, CO, at Metropolitan State College of Denver, she continued to Florence, Italy, to study painting at the Lorenzo de’Medici Art Institute of Florence. She studied textile design in Berkeley, CA at the Institute for Textile Print Design, and printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. Serena and her two children reside in Sausalito, CA, close to her sun-filled studio on the waterfront.