Carved from richly textured Donegal sandstone, An Egyptian Elegy pays homage to the silent, enduring power of ancient Egyptian sculpture – work created by hands long forgotten, yet still commanding reverence across millennia. This piece emerges from a deep, long-held admiration for the stillness and symbolic weight found in the art of that mighty empire, where form and meaning were fused with extraordinary restraint and grace.
The sandstone, with its warm, earthy tones and fine grain, offers the perfect surface for this tribute – yielding to the chisel just enough to allow for subtle planes, softened edges, and a sense of monumentality in miniature. There is no imitation here, but rather a response: a contemporary elegy carved in honour of the mastery, labour, and spiritual depth of those unknown artists and craftspeople who shaped the iconography of a civilisation.
In An Egyptian Elegy, the figure is stilled – not frozen, but held in intentional silence. It is a sculpture about sculpture, a reflection on legacy, and a quiet bow to those whose work transcended time, speaking in stone long after their names were lost to history.
