Hospitality Design - January/February 2015 - 67

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carin riley
By Alissa Ponchione
Photography by David Riley

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STROKE OF GENIUS
A painter's creative pedigree informs her work

"I was brought up with makers," Carin
Riley explains. Her mother an interior
designer, her father and grandfather both
stonemasons, Riley's pedigree proved that
her future as an artist was a fated one. There
was no denying her creative gene and from a
young age, the Long Island, New York native
found her outlet in drawing and painting.
"My mother wanted a painter," she quips,
"and she got what she wanted."
She became fluent in broad brushstrokes
and minimalism, translating abstract
images on the canvas. That led her to
attend the School of Visual Arts in New
York, where she studied painting; going
on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree
from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1973.
She then worked in other mediums-as an
editorial and commercial photographer at
Condé Nast, Hearst Corporation, Simon &
Schuster, and the New York Times, among
others.
But Riley continued to make time for

her first loves: painting and drawing. In
1999 she connected with Susan Lorence, a
well-respected New York art dealer, who
helped get Riley's work featured in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, purchased
for the private collection of Sally and
Wynn Kramarsky, and later donated to the
Foundation Collection at the Arkansas
Arts Center.
"It was kind of magical," when her work
started to take off, she says. "I started to take
[my art] more seriously." Riley's growth
as an artist contributed to her increasing
confidence in her work. "Drawing, it's a
maturation thing," she explains. "When you
first start to draw, you draw like other people
or you solve other people's problems. Then at
a point, you see you're creating the ideas and
solving the problems yourself. But it took a
while for that to happen to me."
Fluid lines and unique shapes mark
Riley's abstract paintings and drawings,
which are inspired by life around her. In
time, her work caught the attention of
upscale retail store Mitchells and Blackstones
Steakhouse, in Westport and Norwalk,
Connecticut, respectively. The latter, her
first hospitality project, showcased a series
of drawings titled "Conversations," that were

1. Adorning the
walls of Blackstones
Steakhouse in Norwalk,
Connecticut, Riley's
"Conversations" is fluid
and expansive.

inspired by a dinner she attended with her
brother at the Dining Lab at Monroe College
in New Rochelle, New York. Riley was
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transfixed by the diners' enthusiasm and
response to the food, and "I started to imagine
them as drawings on the wall." Not long after,
during the summer of 2013, Richard Granoff,
the architect behind Blackstones, saw Riley's
work at Weber Fine Art in Greenwich,
Connecticut and commissioned the suite of
black and white carbon ink drawings for the
restaurant's interior.
The flowing movements in Riley's pieces
evoke a playful ideal, as does her palette of
gray and white hues with hints of orange,
blue, and green-a color scheme influenced
by nature. "Drawing should be associative
to people," she says. While her art is a joyful
experience for viewers, she also considers it
an escape. "The bigger [the pieces] are, the
more you can enter them and be in them." hd
cari nri ley.com

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