Artist : Roy Eastland
Title : Photo Booth Portrait: Dad (1) & (2)
Medium : silverpoint drawing on gesso on board
Dimensions : 21 x 14.5 cm | 8.3 x 5.7 in



ENQUIRE ABOUT THIS WORK



Roy Eastland's intricate work is centred on drawing, primarily utilising the ancient process of silver point, where marks are made by repeated dragging of a fine silver rod tip across a gesso prepared surface. The metal-point trace is gentle but also indelible. These delicate drawn marks are then scratched at to erase. With each re-working there is the hope that something new will emerge into the drawing revealing a further truth. This happens repeatedly over many many years, with the risk of total loss always present. Evaporating columns of hand-written text are often drawn beneath each of the portrait images. These are made up of lines of remembered speech and family stories which vary in each retelling. Over time, some repeated fragments of sentences remain more clearly visible on the surface than others. Over the time that the works are made, the blueish grey drawn lines become more brownish, an aspect of unpredictability and change-over-time which is also welcomed, additive and allegorical. Production is intricate, dedicated, elusive and often painful, where the material quality of technique and time spent metamorphose into compassionate, frail and ephemeral works which venerate human presence, memory and trace.

Roy Eastland lives and works in Thanet, Kent. He graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1996. Works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibition including the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, The Jerwood Drawing Prize (on three occasions), The ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary, The Zoo Art Fair, Miami Art Fair, The London Art Fair, The BP Portrait Award, The British Art Fair, The Hunting Art Prizes, Margate Rocks, the Turner Contemporary Open, among others.


◁