Thomas Eastwood

Thomas Eastwood (1902-1957) was a relatively obscure painter and illustrator, who was a close friend of Jackson Pollack.  Eastwood studied art at the Swain School of Design (Massachusetts) and Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) and then settled in New York with his wife, Evelyn Palme Eastwood (also an artist and illustrator), where he frequently submitted illustrations to the New Yorker to be used as "spots": small drawings sprinkled throughout the magazine that served to fill out short copy for the editors, an opportunity for the reader to rest the eye, and an entry level opportunity to many of the magazine's artists.  Although Eastwood never published a captioned cartoon in the magazine, his spots are ubiquitous throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s.