Egan Prints Highly Original

by David K. Rodgers

GREENSBORO – Thom Egan of Walden is having a show of his beautiful color prints at the Greensboro Free Library for the month of July and will be giving a talk about them on July 27, at 2 p.m.

In his artist’s statement, he says, “A focus of my work is the simultaneously complex and unified

character of nature. The aim of the pictures is to present a harmonious, if uneasy, balance which

is evocative of our everyday experience.”

Egan’s prints are highly original in conception and his compositions consistently integrate abstract forms with shapes that suggest landscapes. What is particularly fascinating is the variety of different visual rhythms that he brings into play in each work, from flowing linear curves to more geometric triangles and grids of rectangles, scattered small squares with staccato effects and centripetal circles.

Strong vertical and horizontal contrasts as well as bold diagonals lead our eyes in multiple directions, all frequently superimposed upon each other, virtually floating without any sense of gravity, creating ambiguous spaces in their overlapping planes. That he is able to bring coherence and harmony to such complex and diverse movements is a brilliant sleight of hand, in part explained by the sequences in his creative procedures, which allow for improvisation and intuitive spontaneity while still being very

disciplined in the medium itself.

Egan has done a number of prints in series that illustrate permutations on underlying structure, such as the four Calendar Page works. In each one there is an area of 42 small white rectangles in a grid format in the lower section of the sheet, but the upper part is strongly juxtaposed with freer, imaginative, organic shapes and colors, all well balanced. Another series shown here is entitled Ice Out, which is like variations on a theme in music, where changes in details and colors, while maintaining the underlying structures, give insights into how he builds his complex compositions.

This exhibition will continue through the end of July and the public is invited to meet and

learn more at the talk with Thom Egan on July 27, at 2 p.m., at the Greensboro Free Library.