Jarrod Eastman

The paintings of Cottonwood Art Festival's 2011 featured artist, Jarrod Eastman of Bozeman, MT are infused with whimsy, motion, music and color, blending reality, fantasy and the surreal.

Eastman grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, surrounded by the desert. "My earliest memories of art in motion are the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. My childhood was inundated with graphics from skateboards to rock bands and in an explosive pop culture. I was fortunate to travel from an early age and have a great appreciation for 'otherness' and cultural diversity."

It was not until the early 1990s that Eastman embraced the paint brush and his nickname JROD. He was influenced, he says, "by the nascent pop surrealism movement – music like Janes Addiction and the writings of Charles Bukowski. I began the journey of becoming a self-taught artist and free spirit."

More than 15 years later, Eastman paints fulltime, communicating his imagination through images. "I love to share my art. I feel a great connectedness that embodies creativity. The dialogue that takes place between the artist and the canvas is as important as the interaction between the canvas and the viewer. This is how art is able to permeate our culture."