Roy Eastland 'Displaced Portraits'

Roy Eastland
Displaced Portraits

“Touch has a memory”
John Keats

Introduction
For the past few years, I’ve been working
on a series of small silverpoint drawings
which I’ve called: ‘Displaced Portraits’.
It’s an ongoing project which I leave and
come back to over and over again. My
output, in terms of finished works of art, is
excruciatingly slow.
These drawings are based on images of
unknown people (unknown to me), who
were photographed, mostly in Germany,
in the 1930s and 40s, who’s photos found
their way into my hands via a second-hand
shop in Cliftonville, Margate (my home
town). I’ve found them all separately and
at different times, and I have no reason
to suppose that any of these people knew
each other.
Each drawing is repeatedly re-worked
over the course of months and sometimes
years. None of my drawings are ever really
finished. These are drawn with points of
silver wire and with needles, scalpel blades
and sandpaper. They are sometimes worked
to destruction. So be it. ‘Finishing’ these
drawings isn’t necessary for me. In any
case, these are not straight forward copies
of pre-existing images. Details change in
the course of the repeated re-working.
I want something extra to emerge through
the act of drawing. My habit of partially
obliterating and then re-drawing, over and
over again, is a way to conjure something
in the drawings which I could not
have foreseen.
I wonder why I draw this way? Why do I
draw these people? I wonder who I have
drawn here?
The original photographs are snap
shot traces of moments when a person
remained still for a moment in their
life. My drawings take time and the act
of drawing them is a kind of meditation
on traces of lived moments. Drawings –
hand-made, physically present drawings
– are traces of time, touch and presence.
A drawing is a displaced thing, the
physical traces of thoughts, perceptions,
decisions, indecision and changes of
mind. Drawings bring other moments into
our presence whenever we spend time
to look at them. Drawings are never just
images or copies of images: their physical
presence is always a kind of memory.
Roy Eastland
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Displaced Portrait no6
(young woman from Essen)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no14
(woman from Kiel 1938)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no1
(identity image of unknown woman)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no10
(young woman from Düren, M)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no5
(unknown individual)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no4
(man from Kiel)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no9
(from Irina to Feliz: “to remember happy times with” 19th July 1942)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no11
(young woman from Düren, 6 Feb 1943)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no15
(woman with baby)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no3
(young woman in carefully repaired image)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no18
(unknown woman)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Displaced Portrait no2
(identity image of young man)
silverpoint on gesso on board, 21 x 15 cm
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Biography
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.
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Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with Roy Eastland ‘Displaced Portraits’
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Portrait photograph by Robert Greshoff
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