Raymond J. Eastwood was born May 25, 1898, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. As a professional landscape artist he taught at the University of Kansas from 1922 to 1968, and influenced several generations of artists, including Lawrence artist and KU art professor Robert Sudlow.

For 20 years Eastwood summered on Cape Cod, and he also spent summers in the Southwest and California to capture those landscapes on canvas. During World War II he served for three years in an intelligence unit in the Army Air Corps. Before coming to Lawrence, he worked as a theatrical scenic artist and billboard painter in New York City. Eastwood studied art at the Yale University School of Fine Arts in 1921 and with the Art Students League of New York from 1915 to 1920. He taught for a year at the Ethel Walker School.

Eastwood began his KU tenure on a one-year appointment as an instructor, but later became a full professor of drawing and painting, and was chairman of the art department from 1949 until his retirement in 1968. In 1950 he married Devona Doxie, a faculty member of KU's School of Fine Arts.

In 1982, Eastwood was named a Governor's Artist by Kansas Governor John Carlin. His paintings are in the collections of the Wichita Art Association, The Philbrook Art Center in Tulas, Oklahoma, the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art and many private collections. Eastwood's work was exhibited at the Rhode Island School of Design, the National Academy of Design, the Chicago Art Institute, the Provincetown Art Association, and the Pennsylvania Academy, among others. He was a member of the Allied Artists of America, the Art Students League, and the Scarab Architectural Fraternity.

Raymond J. Eastwood passed away in Lawrence, Kansas on November 24, 1987.