Thanet artist Roy Eastland will be bringing faces from history to the fore with his exhibition as part of the Margate Now art festival.
Displaced Portraits is a series of small silverpoint drawings with three themes: people seen in photographs taken mostly in 1930s and 1940s Germany; a series of drawings based on photo booth images of Roy’s mum and dad, and images of people disguised in costume. All the drawings have a Margate connection.
Roy said: “The original photographs captured the momentary presence of people being still somewhere: my drawings are a kind of meditation on those displaced traces of moments in people’s lives.
“The drawings take forever to do. They are repeatedly reworked, scratched-away and redrawn over long periods of time. Some contain handwritten lines of remembered speech and family stories to do with Thanet. These texts are also repeatedly worn-away and re-written so that only fragments of stories and repeated key words survive like memories.
“Silverpoint drawings are made using a piece of silver wire drawn across a prepared surface. It’s a drawing technique which is more usually associated with drawings from the Renaissance period. It’s a medium which suits my interest in making art about presence and memory.”
One drawing, ‘Displaced Portrait No3 of a young woman in carefully repaired image, was selected for the 2018 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition. It’s based on a photograph which was torn in half but then carefully repaired so the damage can’t be seen at first glance.
The exhibition will be on show at Gordon House, Churchfield Place, Margate from October 18-19-20, and 24-27. Opening times are: 12:30pm-4pm and 11:30-5pm on Saturdays.
Roy was born and brought up in Thanet. He graduated from Edinburgh College in 1996.
He has previously worked as a sculptor for games companies and is now self-employed and part-time employed as a teacher and artist specialising in drawing.
He is teaching Life Drawing at the Margate Adult Education Centre in Hawley Square this month,