Socrates 76cm
Talking pictures notes to an exhibition by Felim Egan
Socrates features in one of the titles of these brilliant paintings.
‘Have you been reading about Socrates, Felim?’ I said, impressed if a little puzzled.
‘No,’ he says. ‘That's the name of my canary. He brought that colour into my studio. I’ve had to give him
back to the shop since.’ ‘Well, he's beautifully remembered,’ I offer, by way of consolation.
This is lovely, secret information. Actually, after talking to him (the painter who has meant most to me as a writer),
having always thought of his work as austere, on the cusp of otherwordly, serene, and troubled,
I am beginning to see that secret information is quite useful in understanding it. I am immediately reminded
of Samuel Beckett, the seeming abstraction of his work, which turned out in the light of autobiographies
to be not at all abstracted, but very much arising from his life.
Felim talks, as we gaze at his luminous new work, casually, easily, gently about his early life, being brought
to an orphanage by the sea, and how he has always lived in sight of the sea, more or less. I say some of the
canvases look like uncultivated ground, with little lost fields of fierce and bright cultivation, like the struggle to farm
on the seaboards and margins of Ireland, and he says, ‘maybe what you see as wilderness is the fields.’
Then he talks about the top and the bottom of his paintings, the inside and the outside. As he talks I begin
to have thoughts on the tip of my tongue, if that's possible, elusive, vaguely treacherous. I notice how some of
the paintings have a way in and some of them do not at all, those blanking windows of colour, some of them very
strange, sometimes just beginning to be alight, on fire, or maybe showing a dying light, an afterlight.
Suddenly everything in the paintings looks only seemingly moored, in fact, dangerously unmoored.
I am beginning to be slightly unmoored myself.
And he talks about one thing being the negative of another, and I ask him do the squares join their shadows
because they are standing in water? And while I am talking to him I am thinking of orphanages, being removed,
that chaos, that huge untidiness, distress, and how the paintings seem to be trying constantly to tidy chaos,
bringing lost things into order, stray things into composition, subtly, humanly, feelingly, yearningly.
And I see now that whereas before I thought of order what I should have been thinking of was composure.
When I was a very young writer I was very aware of Felim’s work, admired its early mastery, and I used to wonder if
writing, Irish writing, could become as modern as that, even though in another way his work was always against
some of the trends of art in his day, probably still is.
He talks about looking for his true origin, in all senses of that potent word, and finding some of the paths along
the river blocked, the source concealed. And so being prevented from finding it. And my silent thought is some-
times we are prevented from finding even the origins we
already think we know. This great matter of family, of sons, of mothers
And then I am thinking, well, Felim is a man, but there is some deal of mothering in these paintings, because the
‘face’ of them is so serene, like the faces ofthe old Russian madonnas. And then I am wondering if there is anything
beyond autobiography really, despite its seeming distance from narrative and the figurative. And then I am thinking
that Felim has achieved paintings of the inner self, a kind of sundered portraiture as moving as the late Rembrandt.
And wondering whether he isn't being Rembrandt by other means. But I don't say this, because it is possibly
ridiculous. And though he is very friendly I sense he might not suffer such foolishness gladly.
The master painter.
These are Irish paintings by an Irish painter. Only someone who has wrestled with that adjective can know
how vexed an adjective it is. But how come his paintings are both vexed and serene? Is it because they answer their
own terrible questions with calming answers?
They are clearly that mysterious thing, both a map towards home and pictures of home itself. Marginal, limi-nal,
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 where there is a measure of ultimate desperation and dark questioning
of hope. They suggest that home will be regained, but only by some tremendous calculation.
Is it philosophy really he is painting, or rather, are the paintings all instinctive thinking, clear as day, darkening at
the edges, corroding, tide—encroached?
Maybe there is some of Socrates the man, as well as Socrates the canary, in these paintings after all.
Sebastian Barry 2007
Socrates features in one of the titles of these brilliant paintings.
‘Have you been reading about Socrates, Felim?’ I said, impressed if a little puzzled.
‘No,’ he says. ‘That's the name of my canary. He brought that colour into my studio. I’ve had to give him
back to the shop since.’ ‘Well, he's beautifully remembered,’ I offer, by way of consolation.
This is lovely, secret information. Actually, after talking to him (the painter who has meant most to me as a writer),
having always thought of his work as austere, on the cusp of otherwordly, serene, and troubled,
I am beginning to see that secret information is quite useful in understanding it. I am immediately reminded
of Samuel Beckett, the seeming abstraction of his work, which turned out in the light of autobiographies
to be not at all abstracted, but very much arising from his life.
Felim talks, as we gaze at his luminous new work, casually, easily, gently about his early life, being brought
to an orphanage by the sea, and how he has always lived in sight of the sea, more or less. I say some of the
canvases look like uncultivated ground, with little lost fields of fierce and bright cultivation, like the struggle to farm
on the seaboards and margins of Ireland, and he says, ‘maybe what you see as wilderness is the fields.’
Then he talks about the top and the bottom of his paintings, the inside and the outside. As he talks I begin
to have thoughts on the tip of my tongue, if that's possible, elusive, vaguely treacherous. I notice how some of
the paintings have a way in and some of them do not at all, those blanking windows of colour, some of them very
strange, sometimes just beginning to be alight, on fire, or maybe showing a dying light, an afterlight.
Suddenly everything in the paintings looks only seemingly moored, in fact, dangerously unmoored.
I am beginning to be slightly unmoored myself.
And he talks about one thing being the negative of another, and I ask him do the squares join their shadows
because they are standing in water? And while I am talking to him I am thinking of orphanages, being removed,
that chaos, that huge untidiness, distress, and how the paintings seem to be trying constantly to tidy chaos,
bringing lost things into order, stray things into composition, subtly, humanly, feelingly, yearningly.
And I see now that whereas before I thought of order what I should have been thinking of was composure.
When I was a very young writer I was very aware of Felim’s work, admired its early mastery, and I used to wonder if
writing, Irish writing, could become as modern as that, even though in another way his work was always against
some of the trends of art in his day, probably still is.
He talks about looking for his true origin, in all senses of that potent word, and finding some of the paths along
the river blocked, the source concealed. And so being prevented from finding it. And my silent thought is some-
times we are prevented from finding even the origins we
already think we know. This great matter of family, of sons, of mothers
And then I am thinking, well, Felim is a man, but there is some deal of mothering in these paintings, because the
‘face’ of them is so serene, like the faces ofthe old Russian madonnas. And then I am wondering if there is anything
beyond autobiography really, despite its seeming distance from narrative and the figurative. And then I am thinking
that Felim has achieved paintings of the inner self, a kind of sundered portraiture as moving as the late Rembrandt.
And wondering whether he isn't being Rembrandt by other means. But I don't say this, because it is possibly
ridiculous. And though he is very friendly I sense he might not suffer such foolishness gladly.
The master painter.
These are Irish paintings by an Irish painter. Only someone who has wrestled with that adjective can know
how vexed an adjective it is. But how come his paintings are both vexed and serene? Is it because they answer their
own terrible questions with calming answers?
They are clearly that mysterious thing, both a map towards home and pictures of home itself. Marginal, limi-nal,
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 where there is a measure of ultimate desperation and dark questioning
of hope. They suggest that home will be regained, but only by some tremendous calculation.
Is it philosophy really he is painting, or rather, are the paintings all instinctive thinking, clear as day, darkening at
the edges, corroding, tide—encroached?
Maybe there is some of Socrates the man, as well as Socrates the canary, in these paintings after all.
Sebastian Barry 2007
