Artist Margaret Egan not only lifts up her eyes to the hills, she walks them. And when she does her spirit soars. In the wilds of Wicklow she breathes in all that surrounds her and back in her Monkstown studio she transforms those vivid sensations into vibrant images.
"I take a walk called The Mass Path in Kilcoole and the landscape there just takes my breath away. I almost wallow in it. Last spring I saw all this ragwort and from a distance the colour looked amazing and then there is the gorse which I love too. I take it all in, the feeling it creates. I never sketch or use photographs - somehow that would take away the 'feeling' for me."
Ragwort, or buachalán buidhe, is a weed. It's also illegal and toxic and the Noxious Weeds Act of 1936 held landowners responsible for its growth. But with each plant producing fifty to two hundred thousand seeds try getting rid of it. Egan wouldn't want that. She loves gorse too, blazing yellow and smelling of coconut. Gorse, aka furze or whin is not dangerous, its flowers can even be eaten in salads.
The different yellows foregrounded in this painting suggest ragwort and gorse. Beyond them the sun-lit hills are alive with shade and shadow. The image tilts sideways, Egan's fluent brushstrokes adding movement and energy.
"My work is a living thing, it embraces and fascinates" and the cloudy, bluey, smoky sky picks up on the middle-distance colours and the grey-blue tree to the right.
"I'm drawn to landscape, we're all drawn to it, I think. I believe we're all entwined with it, it's so much part of our life whether we acknowledge it or not."
Egan also makes figurative work but "people and landscape are quite alike for me, they both have their complexities." No surprise then that she called one of her paintings What Lies Beneath.
Margaret Egan's work is included in The Solomon Fine Art Winter Show, Balfe Street, Dublin 2. Runs from 5 December to 17 January 2014.
