The Autodidactic Working Woman, 2022, Oil on Primed Gesso Board, 30 x 40 cm (11.8 x 15.7 Inch) Painting is available. Photographer & documentation: Rikard Österlund.
About
British artist Nathan Eastwood (b. 1972 Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria UK).
It was during Eastwoods MA that he reached a conceptual point where he decided that the correct procedure in his development was to empty out of his art practice all existing references to the real world. This marked a time of purging and reducing his paintings to a minimal monochromatic object. The painted monochromatic object and its relationship to the exhibition space became his focus. The use of measurements bridged this gap between painted object and exhibition space. In 2011, he turned from this painted monochromatic object-based art, (installation designed) and dedicated himself to depicting finely made, glossy realist oil paintings of mundane moments of everyday life, focusing on ordinary people in meticulous detail, a practice which he is well-known for today.
Eastwood’s breakthrough showing of his painting titled 'Nico's Cafe' at the East London Painting Prize in 2014 won him the prize as the inaugural winner. As part of the award, he went on to have his first major solo exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery in late 2014 and he was also awarded a generous sum of money to support his making of a new body of paintings for the solo exhibition.
Central to Eastwood’s on-going research is the examination of Identity and Class Politics which acts as the subject for his paintings - a bus driver, or universal credit advisor, or cashier in a supermarket, or homeless people queuing up for food in a church, or simply a fellow human being reading a book at a train station or someone putting out their laundry on a washing line. It has been said that his paintings sit with the language of Kitchen Sink Realism.
He recognises this inherent reference and has stated that he intends to make this aesthetic relevant once again; ultimately, he is looking to make a contemporary Kitchen Sink Realist painting, - one which has its visual roots in the use of a photorealism and the conceptual premise of the social realist arts of the 1950/60s.
Painted on primed gesso wood Eastwood’s oil paintings have its origin in snapshot digital photographic images. These painted works reveal loose brushwork, marks and the surface are riddled with imperfections, such as trapped dust and hair. This series of imperfections inherent within the application and inability to make the painting simulate the photographic print positions his paintings as not being, strictly photo real, but simply, realist paintings reliant on social data.
CV
Nathan Eastwood (b. Barrow-in-Furness, England)
Lives and works in Rochester & London
Education
MA Fine Art, Byam Shaw School of Art, (CSM), London, 2008-09
First Class BA Hons, Fine Art, Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury, Kent 2001 - 05
Solo Exhibitions
2017 My England, Sid Motion Gallery, London
2016 Laptop and Chips, SE9 Container Gallery, London
2014 Work/Recreation/Freedom, Nunnery Gallery, London
2014 Domestic Realism, (CBP) Crypt St Marylebone Church, London
Group Exhibitions
2024 Slow Painting (by CBP) The Plough Arts Centre, North Devon, UK
2024 Assembly (by CBP) The Old Gym, Rye Creative Centre, Kent, UK
2023 'X - Contemporary British Painting' Newcastle Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK
2022 Vitalistic Fantasies, Elysium Gallery, Swansea, UK
2022 'Paradoxes' Contemporary British Painting, Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight
Organised by Freya Purdue alongside so-curators Natalie Dowse and Phil Illingworth.
2020 Yes/No: 32 Painters (virtual open studio)
2020 Contemporary British Painting, curated by Deb Covell, Paula MacArthur, and Judith Tucker.
2020 Me, Myself and I, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London, UK, curated by Rosalind Davis
2019 Contemporary British Painting, Norwich Cathedral, UK
2019 Made in Britain: 82 Painters of the 21st Century, the National Museum in Gdansk, Poland
curated by Robert Priseman, Anna McNay, Malgorzata Taraszkiewicz-Zwolicka and Malgorzata Ruszkowska-Macur
2018 New Painting: Contemporary British Painting, Marylebone Church Cyrpt, London
2017 The Long Count, Von Goetz Art, London
2017 Contemporary Masters from Britain, China: Yantai Art Museum; Artall Gallery & Jiangsu Art Gallery, Nanjing; Tianjin Academy of Fine Art
2017 Contemporary Masters form East of England, 36 works, The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk
2017 Silence Un-scene, Arthouse Lewisham, London
2016 Aviary, Transition Gallery, London
2016 Selected Works from the Seabrook Collection, The Minories, Colchester, UK
2015 London Painting Survey, Blackhorse Lane, Studios, London
2015 Anti-Social Realism, Charlie Smith Gallery, London
2015 Documentary Realism: Painting in the Digital Age, The Crypt at St Marylebone, London
2015 Present Tense: The Swindon Collection, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, UK
2014 @PaintBritain, Ipswich Museum, UK
2014 Priseman-Seabrook Collection, Huddersfield Art Gallery, UK
2014 Towards a New Socio-painting, Transition Gallery, London, UK
2014 The East London Painting Prize, Nunnery Gallery, London (the Inaugural winner)
2014 Signal Over Noise / Don't Split the Focus, Walthamstov, E17, London
2014 This Year's Model, Studio 1.1, Shoreditch, London, E2,
2013 Contemporary British Painting, the Crypt at St Marylebone, London
2013 Zwitgeist Arts Project, ASC Studios, London
2013 Threadneedle Prize (finalist), Mall Galleries, London
2013 Royal Academy Summer Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London
2012 The John Moores Painting Prize (finalist), Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
2012 Occupied Realism, Portman Gallery, London
2011 Platform C's Emergent Art Show, Vyner Street Gallery, Vyner Street, London
Collections
Anita Zabludowicz, London.
Goldhill Family, London
The Priseman-Sea Brook Collection
Yale Centre of British Art
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery
Awards
2021 Priseman Seabrook Prize - Inaugural winner
2014 East London Painting Prize - inaugural winner
2013 The Threadneedle Prize - shortlisted
2012 John Moores Painting Prize - shortlisted
2008 South Square Trust Scholarship (Masters Scholarship)
2005 Outstanding Achievement in BA Fine Art (HONS)
Publications
2019 Made in Britian
2018 Group Exhibition Catalogue, National Museum Gdansk, Poland
2018 The Anomnie Review of Contemporary British Painting. Edited by Matt Price, Published by Anomie
2015 Contemporary Art's Hottest Talent
2914 The Angel Resident Magazine (issue 28) The Angel Resident Magazine
2014 Garageland 17: Society, Transition Gallery, London
2012 John Moores Painting Prize (Exhibition Catalogue)