Riley Bestgen was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. For the past two years, Riley has lived in Florence, Italy, where she trained with the sculptor Cody Swanson and the painter Fernando Cidoncha. Riley graduated from the Scuola Di Arte Sacra, where she studied figurative sculpture. While training in classical techniques, she spent her time in Italy studying theology and Christian symbolism. She mainly sculpted the human body and spent a lot of time practicing in the early stage. Although her work was still immature, her sculptures won her many commissions
