Eileen Havant Townsend

I’m an artist and art writer living in Los Angeles.

My debut solo exhibition, “The Mystery of Cave Island” will opens at Tops Gallery in April 2026. In the past, I’ve made paintings and videos about dead French men; horror vacui watercolors, drawings of LA and the San Gabriel Mountains, and zines about crowds, public transit, and the beginning of the world.

I’ve written about arts and culture for The Paris Review, Artnet, The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Cut, Vogue, and The Village Voice, among other publications. From 2024 - 2025, I was the senior editor at Artillery magazine, an independent Los Angeles art journal. From 2017 - 2022, I lived in the Adirondack Mountains, where I edited a trade publication about forestry and logging, The Northern Logger and Timber Processor. From 2013 - 2016, I was a staff writer and art columnist for Memphis Magazine and The Memphis Flyer. I hold an MA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an MFA from SUNY New Paltz.

But all I really care about is my poetry, which has appeared in Meetinghouse magazine and Girl Blood Info.

Recent Writing

• Seeking Reality in Tinseltown: An Interview with Luc Tuymans // Los Angeles Review of Books

• The Freakiest Outfits We Saw at Frieze Art Fair // Freak Palace

• Mountain as Method: Inside LA’s Most Mysterious Anti-Institution // Artillery Magazine

• In Search of a City Nov/Dec // Artillery Magazine

• Furry Artists Will Remake The World // Artillery Magazine

• Juliana Halpert and Chris Kraus at Bel Ami // Artillery Magazine

• In Search of a City Sept/Oct // Artillery Magazine

• Viola Frey at The Pit // Artillery Magazine

• Jon Rafman at Spruth Magers // Artillery Magazine

• Matthew Lax at Human Resources // Artillery Magazine

• Future Nostalgia: On Zak Smith // Drown In It (monograph)

• Nate Lowman at David Zwirner // Artillery Magazine

• My Breast Reduction, Myself // Freak Palace