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Ruth Egan is an Irish artist and poet originally from Limerick. She studied visual arts at fine art academy St Lucas in Brussels, Belgium, specialising in painting and printmaking. Currently based in Dublin, she has had solo exhibitions of her works in Ireland and Belgium. Her works have also featured in festivals around Ireland such as Ranelagh Arts Festival, Birr Vintage Festival, Galway Fringe Festival and Dingle’s Féile na Bealtaine, among others, and in journals Drawn to the Light and The Ogham Stone.
Her poetry has been published most recently in Drawn to the Light Press, Rathmines Writers Workshop anthology Beneath the Clock, The Passage Between and A New Ulster. ruthegan.weebly.com/
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Magpie Moments
This is a digital image based on a monotype/painting I made of a magpie in movement: I scanned the original image and then manipulated it with filters and distortion to produce this digital version, utterly different from the original but intriguing in itself
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BLACK HOLE
We go out for a walk,
you and I,
under the red eye that is Mars
which causes us pause
and to think skywards,
We talk of black holes,
you and I,
and look to the heavens
ridiculously!
As if to see,
you and I,
how it would be
inside the beast
where internal
force slows to a stop
all in its orb.
No movement, no change:
we, silently, timelessly
side by side;
no movement, no change –
not living then;
no movement, no change –
nor death?
Perhaps this is what bliss is,
an infinite
side-by-sideness…
But we’d never get that far,
you and I,
torn asunder as we would be
by immeasurable gravity.
And so the thought dissipates
and we continue our walk
under the sky,
you and I.
***
The Edge of the Forest
This painting was part of the series of works I made by recycling old metal print plates of aluminium or copper, using them as a “canvas” on which to paint – copper was used in this case. In these works I generally left portions of the metal surface exposed to form part of the image – as with the copper here – in order to have the reflection of light on it play a role in the image, lending a changeable dynamic quality to it.
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FINISHED
It’s not the creeping slippage,
the flourishing my being refuses to regain,
no snapping back into place like before;
nor the little bits of dying that emerge
at every intersection between
doing and having (or rather, having had).
Neither is it regret that my precious
slice of time was wasted,
though sometimes it was;
nor that I imagine I could make a better
go of it now – as if putting all those years
into a fresh vessel would suffice!
No, the time was spent
vigorously at the very least –
it’s just that …
I wasn’t finished!
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Funky Chicken
This image came out of playing around with leftover printing ink – the shape emerged so I reinforced it with painted line.
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STIRRING
Wet, waking, sleep-crusted world unfurl –
stretch from curl;
watch swallows tail-dipping
low over dozing cars.
Seagulls brawl, break silence
crying in a stand-off over bits
of bread, slick backs shining
under the silky drizzle.
This time is theirs
between dream and deed:
the lull before the earth
gears up and whirls away again
on a different dance.
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Spring Sunshine
This painting is from a series of works depicting people through the different seasons and down through several generations, reflecting both the cycle of nature and of human life – the changes but also recurrence and similarities in both cycles.
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INS AND OUTS
Invalid.
Invalid.
In value slipping
towards
absence.
Invaluable
infirmity,
inversing of the invariant.
Inescapable.
Dying? No
– no more
than usual.
The High Window 