Silvia Dimitrova was born in Pleven in Northern Bulgaria in 1970 and won a place at the prestigious School of Applied Arts at Troyan at the age of 13. She graduated in 1989. She then studied icon painting in Sofia under the tuition of Georgi Tchouchev, the grand master of Bulgarian icons, and was invited to exhibit her work in Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, amongst the elite group of icon painters.

She held a successful solo exhibition in Paris, in the Cultural Centre Edmond Rostand, Rueil-Malmaison in 1997. In the spring of 1999 she was commissioned by Downside Abbey to paint the Icon of St Benedict, Wells. At the beginning of 2000 Silvia worked as an artist-in-residence at Wells Cathedral with a commission to paint the Fourteen Stations of the Cross as a project for the Millennium. In the same year she was married, in Wells Cathedral, to Simon Potter, a house master at Downside School, Somerset. During this time she was also nominated and shortlisted for the European Women of Achievement Awards 2000 for contributions to the Arts. Since then Silvia has been working on both private and public commissions including St Paul's Cathedral, London and Hertford College, Oxford.