Eileen Lyons is a South Florida–based artist whose work explores the shifting boundaries between land and water as sites of both permanence and transformation. Her first job as a cartographer for the U.S. Department of Defense in Germany continues to inform her painting today, shaping how she examines coastlines, islands, and peninsulas through aerial perspectives and cartographic language. Her work reflects the continual negotiation of natural and human-made borders, shaped by tides, erosion, storms, and human presence, using these evolving edges as metaphors for change, endurance, and the shaping of self.

Raised on the waters of Long Island, New York, Lyons later moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, where she continued to engage with water systems. She earned a BFA in painting and sculpture from Saint Mary’s College of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. After living in Germany for five years, Lyons returned to Washington, DC, where she earned an MA in Visual Arts from American University and completed her teaching certification at the University of Virginia. Painting courses at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in Washington, DC, developed her work further and exposed her to influences from the Washington Color School.

Lyons’ work has been in over 30 solo and group exhibitions in galleries, universities and non-profit cultural organizations nationally and internationally. Lyons’ work is held in multiple private and corporate collections with several permanent commissions in Washington, DC. She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships including artist residencies at Cill Rialaig Art Centre in Ireland; Studio Works at the Tides Institute & Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine; and Mackinac Island State Park in Michigan. Most recently, she was awarded a residency at Vashon Island, off the coast of Seattle, Washington, for October/November 2026. Lyons has served as a Teaching Artist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.