'Felim Egan's work wears well. There is an intelligence about it that gives it staying power as well as immediate sureness of touch. They are quiet and await your pleasure. They call you out, they call you in. They are fuller than you had realised'. (Seamus Heaney)
By not trying to proclaim any dramatic statements, the work quietly encourages dialogue and debate.
Egan often mixes his paint with sand or ground stone, creating a medium that highlights brushstrokes. This helps achieve the bright visual presence. There is an almost three dimensional quality in his earthy hues. Having lived much of his life near to the ocean, he has been surrounded by nature at its most explicit.
'They are clearly that mysterious thing, both a map towards home and a picture of home itself. Marginal, liminal, lonesome, and of course always with that astounding technical accomplishment that goes without saying (but worth repeating). Look at the fragments of stars, look at the drawn path of these stars, lost lights surely, but bound on their journeys, and joining by some means those lonesome squares of dissolving, resolving colour. They are like some desperate maps left by someone to show how to return, to regain a foothold in the home place. They are very silent but go over to the other side of silence when there is a measure of ultimate desperation and dark questioning of hope'. (Sebastian Barry)
Solo exhibitions of Felim Egan’s work have been held in international museums and galleries, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. His work is included in major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, IMMA in Dublin, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and the Fritz-Winter-Haus, Moderne Kunst Museum, Germany.