“By portraying people and how they think, you can make sense of yourself and the people around you.”

Jordan Eastwood is a self taught, emerging artist, living on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon. Eastwood is heavily inspired by mental health issues, having personally struggled with them his entire adult life and is very invested in furthering the conversation surrounding these topics, aiming to destigmatise and normalise them. He creates works and installations that totally engage people, helping them experience feelings and new ‘environments’, in the hope that it will give people a sense of perspective and a real insight into how another person thinks and feels.

 

Specialising in figure drawings and portraits, Eastwood's work balances merging realism with profound expression. His pieces are distinguished by heavy use of dramatic lighting, primarily using black and white and with selective colour, instilling each artwork with an immersive ambiance that draws viewers in.

 

In previous exhibitions, Eastwood has taken a multisensory approach to his art, going beyond visual experience, incorporating sounds, scents and a sense of space. Taking heavy inspiration from artists such as Mark Rothko and Francis Bacon, his goal for his installations is to envelop viewers into the manifestation of an idea, moment or feeling, offering new perspectives on human emotions and experiences.

 

In order to reinforce the atmosphere created by his drawings, Eastwood sculpts figures from clay, burnt wood and stone, which in previous exhibitions, have acted as visual and emotional anchor points. These sculptures mirror the core ideas of the drawings, becoming expressive through exaggerated poses, and subtly enhanced anatomy.