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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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Seashore
The place where ocean meets land has always attracted me. This painting of such a meeting evolved to include faint printed seahorse motifs rising up out of the water.
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VOID
Rocks like pebbles,
the sea a pond
domesticated by the sleepy bay;
friendly clumps of seaweed
sway, obedient
to the ocean’s breathing.
Deep, deep water
runs stiller
than you could ever imagine:
the chord is perfect
but the sound is cruel
to new ears
that still have dreams.
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Textured Pinks
This abstract piece is a collagraph print with its textures originating from materials applied like a collage onto a rigid substratum, then inked up and put through a printing press to produce a once-off print. Such a print is unique since repeating the process, even with exactly the same colours, would never produce exactly the same outcome due to the inconsistency of the way the ink covers the materials on the surface.
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MID-AFTERNOON
Summertime, as a child,
and the lazy afternoon sun
stretching in over
a dark-mahoganied sitting room
lighting up table legs, piano-stool top,
sideboard panels.
Soft noise of the clock
breathing steadily
on the mantelpiece –
a lull in the day.
The quietness of it all, disquieting;
the stillness, uneasy.
A heavy prowling of some
thing larger;
a slow fossilising of spirit
in between pauses.
I stood as witness
soaking it all up and more –
where the tapestry almost
comes apart.
Is this it, something whispered,
is this it?
***
Signal Hill
This painting was part of a 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. The work is partially a monotype, as I impressed the painted image onto the copper plate then worked on it further to produce the final image. Signal Hill is in Newfoundland, Canada.
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WHO?
‘Your Dad, who was he?’
The question fills the room.
Words, unformed, fall back into my mouth,
merely answers to other questions:
What did he do? What was he like?
Where was he from?
But who was he?
Indeed.
I have no answer.
He was a whole timeline unto himself
of which I knew only
the half.
***
Fish
This piece was the outcome of playing around with leftover paint and randomly pressing paper onto it – something I often do to use up the paint and to see what emerges. In the resulting impression I noticed a fish-like shape had formed and I worked on it further to produce the image shown here.
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THE LAKE HOUSE
Waterfall kids cascade
down through pine-strewn
forest, falling out
onto a sun-dazzled lake.
Off the wharf jumping,
along rock edges splashing;
cold water fills buckets,
boats wobble wet bodies.
Hide and seek amongst tree trunks
in the dead afternoon heat,
playing in shade
of the wooden house.
Later, evening sun
dissolves in adult glasses
while children spotlight
with torches till sleep.
Where are they now – did they ever exist?
The evidence has mutated,
disintegrated, ambiguated: the scene
can never be preserved.
There is nothing left for it but
to live unconditionally – ridiculously,
even – for that is all you are given.
The High Window 