Carolyn Castano

Carolyn Castaño (born 1971 in Los Angeles, CA), is an American visual artist. She is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2013), the California Community Foundation Getty Fellow Mid-Career Grant (2011), and the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant (2011). She is an Assistant Professor, Drawing & Painting, at Long Beach City College.

Castaño creates portraits utilizing painting (watercolor and acrylic), drawing and collage. Her portrait subjects are often adorned as soon as glittery and ornate accessories, bold hairstyles, color, and patterns referencing the world of tall fashion. Some of her portraits feature a atmosphere named "Betty Ramirez," the artist's change ego, with visual references to Mexican Golden Age cinema and Italian neorealism. Other portraits are based on photographs that are subsequently translated into painting. For example, her series of paintings titled "Hair Boys" is based on photographs of associates donning hairstyles from subsequent to decades and even centuries.