λ Felim Egan (Irish 1952-2020) Untitled (Blue) Mixed media on canvas Signed with initials and dated 02 (verso) 210 x 210cm (82½ x 82½ in.) Unframed Provenance: Private Collection, Ireland Purchased from the above by the present owner Felim Egan was born in Strabane, Northern Ireland in 1952. After studying in Belfast and Portsmouth Egan attended the Slade School of Fine Art for his formal training. In 1980 Egan travelled to Rome where he spent a year at the British School before he returned to Dublin. Egan would spend the rest of his life living and working at Sandymount Strand and the Docklands at Dublin Bay. The success of his career as an abstract painter was signified by his major solo exhibitions in the 1990s at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Throughout his career he exhibited internationally holding 72 solo shows. In 1986 Egan was elected to Aosdána, the Irish association of artists whose work is considered to have made an outstanding contribution the arts in Ireland. Whilst Egan's work has been placed in the abstract category he always said that it was the landscapes around Sandymount Strand and Dublin Bay that inspired his work: the large empty sands, vast everchanging skies and the long horizons. Egan's canvases became renowned for their monochromatic palette with hieroglyphic motifs and markings. The paintings are built up with layers of thin colour and stone powder ground into the acrylic. His work is tied to the place he lived and holds a deep emotional connection to the artist. Roisin McDonough, Chief Executive of the Arts Council, described Egan as one of the most important painters to emerge from Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. Egan was a 'genius for filling the cleared space in his canvasses and drawings and constructions with the pressure of something withdrawn or withheld.' Seamus Heaney, 1986