GEOFFREY EASTOP
b. 1921


Geoffrey Eastop was brought up in London. He showed a talent for art at school, but typically he was persuaded to take a job as an insurance broker before the Second World War broke out. He served in the army from 1941-46.

From 1949-52 Geoffrey trained as a painter at Goldsmiths College, London, where the discovery of the great artists of the modern movement came to him as a complete revelation.

Afterwards, due to the difficulties of the time, he was compelled to work as a potter, a natural choice since he had experimented with pottery when still at Goldsmiths. His intention during this period was to return to painting as soon as possible; but as he became more involved with the skills of the potter, the idea grew in his mind that in time he might be able combine these skills with the instincts of a painter and so form an art which satisfied him.

In 1969 he began a long and rewarding collaboration with the painter John Piper. Piper's requirements being strictly from a painter’s point of view enabled Geoffrey, at the same time, to develop his own work in the direction he was really aiming at.

Geoffrey has also lectured in ceramics and art & design and has undertaken major commissions, in particular floor and wall tiles for Robinson College Chapel, Cambridge and a large mural incorporating Reading Coat of Arms for Reading Civic Centre from a design by John Piper. He continues to exhibit frequently at major galleries and has also exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He had a major touring retrospective exhibition in 1992-93 organised by Portsmouth City Museum. Work held in public collections include the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Since his move to a studio near Newbury, Berkshire in 1984, Geoffrey has developed this new work as a result of a long and innovative period of development. The artist uses a unique hand-building technique to produce new forms associated with the structure and surface character of walls; and more recently forms in black and red having their origin in rocks and distinctive, part figurative, stone shapes.