A solid traditional background lends sculptural strength and integrity of form to Lorraine Vail's work. An apprentice at fifteen in the studio of a noted painter, she then earned a full four-year scholarship based on her artistic achievements. With a B.F.A. in Illustration from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania she worked as a freelance artist primarily in New York and Philadelphia. Feeling the constraints of working in only two dimensions, she ultimately turned to sculpting.

With an exceedingly active, twenty-year history of public commissions, Vail's work can be found in a number of public and private collections in this country as well as overseas where several distinguished hotels have installed her fountains and sculptures in their lobbies. She has been honored with a number of solo and group exhibitions and her work appears in a variety of venues from galleries and museums to corporations and universities. Her sculptures have appeared in exhibits at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California and are part of the permanent collections of the Blackhawk Automotive Museum in California, and the Berman Museum in Pennsylvania. Three of Vail's public sculptures are listed as sites on the National Museum of Women in the Arts tour in the Washington, D.C. area. Five of Vail's bronzes have been recently included in the Vatican Library's permanent art collection in Rome. The artist is currently preparing for shows with a new body of work centered around creatures that at one time, or perhaps in a future context inhabit the Northern California ridge where she and her husband are constructing a new studio.