NINE LIVES: NEW WORKS BY MIKE EGAN

Funeral Director turned Artist Explores Death in New Exhibit

NINE LIVES: NEW WORKS BY MIKE EGAN
Funeral Director turned Artist Explores Death in New Exhibit

Opening Reception: Friday, May 29, 6–10 PM
Live music and free food! Luis Fernandez de Cordoba will be playing flamenco guitar
Galactic Panther Art Gallery | 1303 King St, Alexandria

The show explores the universal themes of life, death, and religion through Egan’s distinctive visual language. His acrylic paintings draw from an unusually personal well. Before establishing himself as a full-time artist, Egan spent years working as a licensed funeral director and embalmer—an experience that profoundly shaped his relationship to mortality, ceremony, and meaning.

“Through funerals we tend to celebrate not only someone dying but we also celebrate that person’s life,” Egan writes. “Each painting is in some way a goodbye to somebody who passed away; they are little funeral portraits.”

Egan’s visual influences range widely, including German Expressionists, stained glass windows, religious icons, Southern folk art, outsider art, and Halloween and horror films. The result is a body of work that is both irreverent and deeply sincere: bold lines, iconic imagery, and a graphic sensibility that would add new life to your art collection.