Kathleen Eastwood-Riaño
is a Philadelphia-based artist working across painting, drawing, and installation. Her work often explores family memory, relationships between generations, and domestic space.
At first glance, her paintings can seem almost transparent. But look a little longer, and you begin to see that this transparency is actually about layers.
Eastwood-Riaño begins with drawings and photographs, combining them into digital collages where images overlap and intersect.
She then translates these complex compositions into paintings, intentionally preserving the distortions created in the process. For her, they echo the way memory works: one recollection overlaps another, details fade, and different spaces begin to merge.
She leaves parts of the image visually open, placing warm fields of pink and orange against cooler blues and greens, while allowing the drawing to remain visible within and over the color. The result is a surface that seems to glow from within.
She then translates these complex compositions into paintings, intentionally preserving the distortions created in the process. For her, they echo the way memory works: one recollection overlaps another, details fade, and different spaces begin to merge.
She leaves parts of the image visually open, placing warm fields of pink and orange against cooler blues and greens, while allowing the drawing to remain visible within and over the color. The result is a surface that seems to glow from within.
At first, her paintings are easy to read: a kitchen, a person sitting at a table, plants by a window. But the longer you look, the less certain the space becomes. Objects dissolve into color, perspectives overlap, and what seemed familiar begins to feel more like a memory than a physical place.
