Fiona Eastwood
There is an engagement with proximity in the work. Proximity in the addressing of space within the paintings and the remove of the painting from the photographic resource. This remove provides the ‘small space of slippage …where our minds can see to freely-wonder but not obsess’ (Rodney Harder).
Paint becomes its own preclusion not confined to revealing a represented image but its own presence on the surface ‘the painted mark is the thing in itself and the thing it describes’ (Altfest), the pursuit of eschewing a complete adherence to either being important to the work. ‘To remain unsure about when a representation points to a reality outside of itself and when it points back to itself. It is in this place of uncertainty that a painting finds its greatest leverage.’ (Schwabsky)
The paintings are made in one sitting with oil on board. The motif is compressed into a series of gestures. The recent collage/embroidery pieces use shapes from a series of oil paintings made on paper. These shapes are cut out and stitched to the canvas. The colours and shapes are based on subject matter from postcards and photographs from my father’s time on Christmas Island in the 1950s. The act of embroidery creates a slowing down of the process and an intimacy in the proximity with the work.
Eastwood lives and works in East London. She graduated from Camberwell School of Art in 2014. Eastwood was selected for the John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK (2014) and Hans Brinker Painting Prize (shortlisted) Amsterdam (2013).
Her works are held in private and public collections including the Priseman-Seabrook Collection. She has exhibited at the London Global Art Fair Olympia and has been selected for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts twice.
International group exhibitions include:
Made in Britain: 82 Painters of the 21st Century, the National Museum in Gdańsk, Poland (2019)
Contemporary Masters from Britain, (touring China) Yantai Art Museum, Artall Gallery, Nanjing, Jiangsu Art Gallery, Nanjing and the Tianjin Academy of Fine Art, China (2017).
Selected exhibitions
2018 CBP New Painting The Crypt, St Marylebone Church, London
2017 Testcard P The Crypt, St Marylebone Church, London
2017 Anything Goes? Art Bermondsey Project Space, Bermondsey, London, UK
2016 Art on a Postcard, Maddox Gallery, Mayfair, UK2014 Contemporary British Painting, The Priseman-Seabrook Collection, Huddersfield, UK2014 @Paint Britain, Ipswich, UK