Eamon O’Rourke is a prolific artist and sculptor. His work includes mixed media sculptures and painting, both abstract and representational. He’s been exhibiting since 1973, with over 40 solo shows in major galleries through the United States, Italy and Canada.
“I’m constantly looking to push the boundaries of my work,” O’Rourke explains. “I’m an idea-based artist who needs to be easily stimulated by outside stimuli. I’m always experimenting with techniques, materials, subject matter, and what projects I want to take on next.”
Eamon O’Rourke sculptures are created from a variety of both organic and inorganic materials. He uses found objects for much of his work. In the early twenty-first century he became fascinated with the idea that many ancient cultures worked with a large number of natural substances, including plant products. O’Rourke’s early career as an educator exposed him to these ancient processes in art history classes taught by couple Christopher and Rose Styka. These teachers were living historians who shared details about painting “with egg tempera on gessoed wood panels or linens”. This process is known as egg painting or encaustic painting. O’Rourke took this process to an art studio as his first working medium.
In the late 1990s O’Rourke began to create an egg art style in sculpture. He bought several dozen eggs and began using the natural ingredients in them to create mixed media sculptures. In his earliest works, he would put yellow ochre or iron oxide pigment into the yolks of egg shells along with whatever other natural material was available at the time. The resulting works included “spheres, columns and swirling forms”, created by applying different materials on and inside egg shells. He soon discovered that applying a substance on top of another often gave better results than using a single material alone.
Eamon O’Rourkehas created a variety of sculpture works from the fragile materials of eggshells and beeswax. O’Rourke uses natural materials in his sculptures including verdigris, pumice, clay and cotton to name just a few. The process that he uses to apply these substances on or inside the egg shells is called encaustic painting or egg painting, an ancient process that gives the resulting work a warm organic feel.
He has used this process to create many different styles and techniques. “I can work abstractly; I can work representational,” O’Rourke explains, “but my goal with encaustic painting is to preserve that initial moment of creation.