Roy Eastland and visit to the Beaney Art Gallery and Museum, Canterbury

I went to this Gallery in the High Street in Canterbury because their Artist in Residence for November is Roy Eastland.  I first saw and liked his work at the Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition.  He is an artist who draws using the Silverpoint technique.  This produces a very lovely soft image, almost misty in appearance.  It is achieved by first priming the surface with gesso, Chinese white watercolour, or acrylic white.  The image is then scratched and rubbed onto the surface using a pointed piece of silver.  A chemical reaction takes place between the metal and the primer, resulting in an image that will gradually become darker over time.  This can also be done using gold or copper.

Roy Eastland’s moving and delicate piece at the Jerwood was called “They looked like silver birds, the sun was shining on them...”

He describes them thus..."Each page records details of one of the victims of the German 'Gotha' bombing raid on Folkestone on 25th May 1917.  Some pages include portrait drawings but some, where there are no images to work from, have only the victim's name, age and some personal details and their injuries and cause of death." 

You can see his work on his Blog page:  http://royeastland.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/they-looked-like-silver-birds-the-sun-was-shining-on-them/

I was inspired to try experimenting with silverpoint on seeing this, and here’s my first effort as one of my pieces for a Life Drawing homework, “Still Life with Objects that are important to me.”  It is hard to reproduce the subtlety of silverpoint in a photograph.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of Roy Eastland’s work on display at the Beaney.  I found the building to be a buzzy place, very higgledy piggledy, with a mixture of old stuffed animals and rooms with artworks from different periods. 

I found it quite hard to take in, as there seemed no logic to the arrangement.  An artist called Neil Kelly was exhibiting in the “Front Room.  I didn’t like his work, as I found it kitsch and unfunny, but was interested in the materials he used such as enamel on ceramic.  The Garden Room contained paintings of cattle, which didn’t interest me at all.  All in all, I found it a disappointing experience.