Eoin Burke inverts a traditional role of sculpture, portraying deities, to instead focus on the human spirit embodied in physical form. Artistically influenced by a range of sources including Alberto Giacometti, Edgar Degas, Martha Graham, Paul Cézanne and Classical Greek Sculpture, Burke uses the body and it’s limits of form and gesture to offer visual meditations on scripture, philosophy, and poetry. The sculptures and paintings are hand built of epoxy clay over the base structure of steel, wood, or linen. The works roughness creates tension with the classical forms of the body, before layers of paint provide both color and the suggestion of loss as the tool marks become obscured. As can be seen in his sculpture “Forgiveness”, Burke takes the sacred practice and imagines how the action of forgiveness is expressed within a body. Signaling a modern dancer’s movement, the figure expresses the inner conflict of forgiving by appearing to pull himself forward and backward simultaneously. Through his work Burke challenges the notion that the spirit is disconnected from the body.

Eoin Burke has worked in the fields of architecture, ornament, public and private art. The places where all those disciplines overlap is the most exciting for him.