Kathleen Eastwood-Riaño is a Philadelphia based artist. She makes paintings, drawings and installations that investigate intergenerational memory.
She is a 2021 grant recipient from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and a 2020-22 recipient of the Fleshier Wind Challenge Solo Exhibition. Her work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions nationally and has work held in private collections both nationally and internationally.
Eastwood-Riaño received her MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute and her BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, The University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art & Design. She is currently an Assistant Professor at The Pennsylvania College of Art & Design.
Artist's Statement
My work explores interpersonal relationships and structures that emerge within the home. I am interested in family relationships, relationships to our belongings, and the spaces we inhabit. My practice begins by collaging drawings and photographs. I embrace the distortions that emerge from this process. I am interested in how these visual fissures parallel the way memories can fragment and blur the narrative.
For the past 10 years, I have worked almost exclusively with interior spaces. In much of this work, there is an active absence of the figure and an overabundance of items. These paintings represent my childhood home and the remnants of growing up in the midst of an ugly divorce. I see this as simultaneously melancholic and beautiful.
Since March of 2020, I have been thinking about relationships in a new way. Social distancing, stay-at-home orders, screen mitigated classes, birthdays, weddings and funerals have highlighted for me how precious connections are. After watching my only brother’s wedding, and hosting my father-in-laws funeral on zoom, I began a new body of work. This work moves fluidly between past and present, looking across the table
Education
2011 San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA MFA