Roy Eastland

My work is mostly drawing. I find myself drawn to subject matter to do with people, memory, the sea and places of emotional significance. My drawings are sometimes no bigger than postcards or are long and narrow panoramic ' views' made up of layer upon layer of image and text. These texts are lines of remembered speech, names of places (which hold emotional significance), transcriptions of associated and graffiti found in these locations. They become embedded within the various layers and form part of the material substance of the repeatedly re-worked surfaces…’East Kent Daily Time Slip’ is one of a series of small drawings based on my memories of my dad’s descriptions of D-Day and the ‘Mulberry Harbour’ at Arromanches (on the Normandy coast). The starting point for this particular drawing is a small photograph of a stormy sea hitting the seafront and it is one of a number of photographs and postcards from before the war that Dad brought back with him. The photograph of the storm can easily be mistaken for Westgate bay and I like the idea of condensing and over-laying various and vaguely connected elements onto one area of pictorial space, like a field of vision over time. These drawings emerge through an open-ended process rather than planned design. I want these works to be like a memory.

Roy Eastland graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1996, and his work has been selected for the Hunting Art Prize, BP Portrait Award and the Jerwood Drawing Prize.