When an artist begins a painting, the first thing they see is blank canvas, which is the promise of something yet to come. Anything can appear in that empty space. It’s the artist’s job to fill it. For painter Allen Egan, when he completes a piece, he hopes a similar interaction happens between the now-filled canvas and his audience.
The Trap, oil on canvas, 36 x 36"“What does it all mean? I paint it so you can decide for yourself. I come up with the design, and the figures and the details. I give the viewer something to think about. There is no hidden meaning, nothing deep, because it’s an image and I present to my viewer,” Egan says. “When I tell that to people, I’ve had people burst into tears. Others just tell me thank you. They thank me because I’ve released them from the burden of my idea and now they can enjoy the painting on their own.”
The Monkey’s Comrade, oil on canvas, 36 x 36"Other artists have talked about overexplaining their works, or just this idea that a painting can bonk viewers on their heads with the artist’s own interpretation, but the way Egan phrases it—“released from the burden of my idea”—is powerful and freeing. It encourages exploration within his pieces. Anything can happen. Consider The Trap, from his new show, Creative Encounters at RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan. The painting has a boyish figure wearing an old-fashioned diving helmet in an interior setting. In his hands is a fishbowl with the water level dipping dangerously low for a large goldfish that seems unaware of the peril bearing over it. For some, the work could inspire a sense of doom or anxiety as both the boy and the fish slowly run out of air and water. There is also a sense of claustrophobia between the bowl and the helmet.
“Now, this is why I don’t tell people the meaning, because those ideas were not in my mind while creating this piece,” says Egan, who adds that he would hate to create an image so rigid in its meaning to wall off other interpretations. “I don’t want to tell people how or what to feel.”
The Enigma, oil on canvas, 36 x 36"
The Attention Seeker, oil on canvas, 40 x 30"
Egan, who lives on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, in the Canadian city of Gatineau, brings to his work a colorful past that originates in Zimbabwe, Africa. He later spent time in South Africa. He ended up in Canada after a chance encounter with his future wife at a game reserve during a Christmas vacation many years ago. “Our tents were next to each other, which is how we met,” he says. He went from Africa’s deserts to Canadian winters, and lots of climates in between.
The Silent Partner, oil on canvas, 40 x 30"His exposure to other cultures, governments and art communities has allowed him to sample from all over the world, which can be seen in the Soviet-style military outfit in The Monkey’s Comrade and the formal attire on young boys in The Mystics to the presence of animals such as monkeys, dogs and foxes. He also likes to use some of the interior settings popular by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, who often seated his subjects in rooms lit entirely by light from a side window. For his painting The Enigma, he merges two different time periods together with a man wearing clothing that could come from the 20th or 21st centuries near a seated man wearing clothing that seems to originate from Italy in the 13th or 14th centuries.
The Mystics, oil on canvas, 36 x 36"
“I painted The Enigma immediately after returning from a trip to Italy with my [19-year-old] son,” he says. “That trip represented the first time I had seen any of the Renaissance paintings in person and up close. It was a transcendent moment. I had only seen them in books, on TV or on the net. It was a powerful experience. I don’t consider myself a painter of that style. I like detail but have always avoided it, but seeing those works made me fall back in love with detail.”
Interior Scene 1, oil on canvas, 30 x 30"
Although he has great interest in the Renaissance, Egan considers his own work more closely aligned with magical realism, with an emphasis on the figure and those Vermeer interiors that reveal “the murkiness, the dustiness and the moodiness” of the shadows.
Egan will present around 10 new works at the RJD Gallery show, which opens September 3 and continues through October 2. —
RJD Gallery 227 North Main Street • Romeo, MI 48065 • (586) 281-3613 • www.rjdgallery.com
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