I’m really pleased to find that my metalpoint drawing, “Photobooth Portrait (Mum, Nov 22, 1983)”. Has been selected for the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Drawing Prize Exhibition 2023.
My drawing is one of a series of works based on a sequence of photobooth images of my mum. There is an unused strip of three and a separate, used, photo which would have originally been one of a sequence of four. My drawings are based on these images and on my memories. Each of the original snap-shot portraits were slightly mistimed and so reveal certain characteristic facial expressions which better posed portraits would not have captured. The intact set of three images have a hand-written note on the back which dates the moment to 22nd November 1983.
In autumn 1983 I moved away from home to do the Fine Art degree at Stourbridge College of Art. I dropped out of the course (a long story for another time, perhaps) but I stayed in The Black Country for a couple more years and I used to catch the number 9 bus or cycle to Birmingham to visit the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery and The Triangle. I’m looking forward to returning to Birmingham and being inside the BMAG again after so long away. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing the other drawings in this new Drawing Prize exhibition.
I have another drawing from this series presently on show in Wells Cathedral as part of the Wells Art Contemporary 2023 exhibition. And I’ll be showing another from this series as part of this year’s Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. It feels quite odd and intense to be sharing these very personal works of Art in these exhibitions.
Each of these small metalpoint drawings take photobooth images as their repeated point of reference, but they are not straightforward copies of pre-existing images; they are also drawings done from memory. They are repeatedly scratched-away and redrawn in the hope of getting something in the drawings which feels true. They are drawn on gesso with various points of silver and gold, with various needles, scalpel blades and sandpaper. They are as much drawn into as drawn onto. My copy of my mum’s handwriting on the back of the photos is another way of drawing her presence into these works. It’s an emotional experience to be sharing these drawings, but I hope people spend some time with them.
The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Drawing Prize Exhibition 2023 runs from 5th September to 15th October at the RBSA Gallery, 4 Brook Street, St Paul’s Square, Birmingham, B3 1SA.
Roy Eastland: Drawing 