Virginia Tillou (nee Eller) was born in Centerville, Pennsylvania and was raised in Buffalo. In the late 1920s she studied at the Buffalo Fine  
Arts Academy and the Provincetown Summer School of Art in Massachusetts.  Her teachers included Edwin Dickinson, Dr. William  
Hekking, and Seymour Drumlevitch.

She formed a loose artistic association with a Buffalo-based group who called themselves the Oakland  (showing 500 of 1112 characters).