11/24/2025
Cathy Olympia Kostoulakos Fleischer loved you. Let’s begin with that rather than the actual, ‘traditional’ beginning these things tend to have — which, you know the kind: born to George and Emily (Dristiliaris) Kostoulakos in Dracut, Massachusetts on December 13th, 1948, sister to Margo, Daphne, Mitch, and Dean — because it’s worth bearing everything in mind. It’s also worth knowing that everyone called her Kippi or Kip.
Kippi was a painter, teacher, and traveler. She explored Istanbul as all but a teenager and later used Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books about Greece as a chance to talk about her own time there. She would explore Mexico City and Frida Kahlo’s house with her husband well before it was a tourist destination, as well as Monet’s house in Giverny well before the area was done up for visitors.
As an artist — with Mass Art, Cal State Fullerton, and her warm, open curiosity under her belt — her style ran the gamut: in Berkley, she would craft whorls of black; she could impersonate Robert Rauchenberg as well as anybody; she did quick sketches of pencil filled with living lines; she would dash off charcoal sketches of serious faces and dodecahedrons and put them on the walls of her studio; and then there was her painting, which defied easy description but had clear roots in Balthus, Picasso’s blue period, medieval art, and Cezanne.
She had a soft iconoclastic streak: when everyone around her in San Francisco was wearing flower prints, flower dresses, flower everything in the summer of 1968, she wore an all-white suit in the style of Thomas Wolfe or Laurie Anderson. A few years later, down the road in Berkeley, she was regularly making her own bread and would later joke that she was Alice Waters well before Alice Waters.
She met her husband Richard when they were both summoned — amongst others — to build a log cabin for a mutual friend in Alaska. It was her job to stuff the moss between the wood. It took nearly two months to build the cabin, and after the cabin was done and everyone left — Cathy for Massachusetts, Richard for California — Richard sent Cathy a letter, inviting her back out.
The paper trail tells us how it went: ever the artist, she drew sketches of Richard as he lay in bed. Ever the photographer, he would take photographs. She would send postcards back to her parents about how they were having fun dancing to surf music. She would sketch little dancers in the corners of these cards to represent the two of them. Up and down the Pacific Coast Highway they went. They married in 1972.
Cathy and Richard welcomed their first and only child, Evan, into the world in 1986. They left California to be closer to Cathy’s family in Massachusetts in 1989.
Cathy adored Evan, who remembers his childhood as one of softness; of Paul Simon’s Graceland concert in Zimbabwe; of being taken to Fenway Park, the Museum of Science, the Museum of Fine Arts, and libraries and bookstores over and over again; of late-night baseball games being taped as he went to bed — of being welcomed into The Art Life, and being made to feel at home there, because it was home. How many hours would the three of them spend breaking down their thoughts on this art exhibition or that film? How often would play become real? There were too many moments to count. When the three of them were together, which was often, it was like stepping in-between two mirrors (or, in this case, three): the cascade of mutual recognition and delight powered their days.
Cathy, Richard, and Evan left Medford for the North Shore of Massachusetts in the latter half of 1999. On their first night in their new town, they ate at a local pizza place. They wanted to pay at the beginning of the meal, but the proprietor told them not to worry about it, so they ate, enjoyed their food, and left, only to be chased by the owner because they had forgotten to pay, leaving the three of them with laughter.
The years passed. Cathy gave Evan rides to school and worked in her art studio during the day. Paintings would easily take weeks, months, years, and even then she would say that she was only just starting to make progress. She would frequently take trips to the MFA or the Met in New York or run down to grab something from Dick Blicks in Central Square. She sometimes worked at a speed that made a painter like Antonio Lopez Garcia look hasty. But she worked. She painted. She lived her life.
Life in the 19th century farmhouse on the North Shore meant appreciating small things, which she was all too happy to do: she was softly overjoyed to see a rabbit running through the yard; there was a quality of proprietorship, a wine taster’s delight in good weather leading to a good day; the chance to always have the Red Sox on was a luxury, even if she always felt a paternal empathy for whichever team the Sox were facing if that team happened to lose.
Cathy was a little bit like Diane Keaton and a little bit like an aging Patti Smith. There was a consistency of practicality, responsibility, and charm to her that created a feeling of obviousness bordering on the timeless with whatever she did, the kind of thing where — were she here — she would be the one writing this herself.
Were she here, though, she would be spending her time giving her brother Dean a kiss on the cheek while laughing with her sisters Margo and Daphne and her brother Mitch. Were she here, she would already be plotting what to get her grand nephews and nieces for Christmas (Alistair, Quinn, Noah, Rowan, Emily, Ezra.) She would be catching up with their parents — Evan’s cousins, now grown — Megan, Nathan, Gabe, Caroline, and their respective spouses — Mike, Lauren, and Karolina. She would be telling Evan about how his cousin Megan used to work in the East Wing of The White House and look what they’ve done to it. Were she here, she would want to tell Dr. Wadleigh and her team at Brigham and Women’s and all the doctors at Dana Farber that they did a wonderful job these past twenty years. Were she here, she would burst into laughter when Evan would inevitably joke that this portion of the obituary always sounds like a politician thanking everyone who spoke before them, doesn’t it?
She’s so sorry she isn’t here. She's accompanying Cary Grant across the rooftops of southern France looking to steal an item or two. She's walking the streets of Rome with Audrey Hepburn. She's camping in the fields of Europe with Richard, spending six weeks there with almost no reservations to their name. She’s making her way back through the gallery one more time because there was a painting she just wanted to take a look at a second time, a third time, or, perhaps, a fourth. She’s — well, she should really go get lunch ready anyway. She needs to make sure she has enough gluten-free things for Fran and to remind Richard to eat because he’s never aware he’s hungry. She should ask Evan if he wants to eat and — oh, before she forgets — send an e-mail off to Ginny and Steve, but she’ll have to do this quick because she wants to get back to the studio to paint because she has an idea of something that sits somewhere between Balthus and Cezanne but is always inevitably forever hers and hers alone.
There is no scheduled viewing or service. An art show of Cathy’s work is currently scheduled to take place in the spring. Details to come. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
