James Egan

Hello my fabulous nieces!  How is this week treating you?

 

I am most completely enjoying our foray into Australian artists.  Looking up someone new to share their work with you is usually a highpoint of my week!  I’d like to pretend that I intimately know the names and key works of enough artists to be able to do this off the top of my head, but that would make me a much more impressive art historian than I actually am.  What I really do is spend some time on the google, using different key words (like lately “Australian artists”) until I come across an image that appeals to me, and then I research to find out who created it, and if I like their body or work, or at least what I can find of their life story, enough to want to share it with you, then that person gets to be our artist of the week….after I check my list to make sure we haven’t already talked about them, of course!

 

And that is how I found the ridiculously awesome James Egan.

 

James is an Australian and is still very much alive and painting today, but as a young man he was a boxer and a “horse breaker” (a man who helps convince horses that they should let people ride them).  Apparently he has a coffin in his art studio that he likes to take naps in…so James is what we’d call “eccentric” – which is a kind way of saying “if he were anything other than an artist we’d call him a Grade-A weirdo, but art people are supposed to be nuts, so we use this word instead”.  People like James are usually some of the most interesting ones you’d ever meet in real life (but should you meet this kind of person in college, I can tell you with authority that although they are super fun to hang out with, they make terrible, terrible roommates & almost never have the rent on time).

 

His website tells me he was designated a "Living treasure in Perpetuity" in 1986.  I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think I  need to add getting that designation to my own list of life goals.  It sounds AWESOME.

 

Someone said about him: "James paints the life that thunders around us and the people that inhabit it."   I’m not quite sure why I like that sentence so much, but it seems like this is an extraordinary thing to have someone say about your work. 

 

What I like best about his work is the texture in it.  I love this portrait, how clearly you can see the planes of the mans face – the angle under his cheekbone, the ridge of his brow…the paint is so soft looking, but the edges it makes are so hard.  And I love his houses.  He uses lots of violet-blue in his landscapes, and he does such lovely things to capture the light.  I hope you enjoy it, too!

 

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

xoxoxoxoxoxo