Felim Egan was born in Co. Donegal in lreland in 1952 and studied in Belfast and Portsmouth before attending the Slade School of Art in London.
Since then he has lived and worked at Sandymount Strand on the edge of Dublin Bay.
Egan is known as an artist of restrained eloquence, who sparingly deploys a vocabulary of hieroglyphic motifs over monochromatic expanses of colour. His paintings are built up slowly with layers of thin colour applied to the surface and stone powder ground into the acrylic.
He is an abstract artist, yet his work is tied to the place he lives and works, to the long horizons, big skies and empty sands of the Strand. In this way his abstract paintings are almost landscapes, with a magical quality that his neighbour, the poet Seamus Heaney has aptly described as 'a balance of shifting brilliances'.
Egan has exhibited widely across Europe with 43 solo exhibitions since 1979, including the lrish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1985 he represented lreland at the San Paulo Biennale and in 1993 he won the prestigious UNESCO prize in Paris.
His work hangs in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the collection of the European parliament.
Major Commissions include ; Dublin Castle; O¹Reilly Hall, UCD; Meeting House Square, Temple Bar; Pavilion Theatre, Dunlaoghaire and the National Gallery of Ireland. Felim is also a member of Aosdána.
