Mike Egan 'Angels Will Visit' Print Available

Artist: Mike Egan
Title: Angels Will Visit
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: 10 x 10 Inches
Edition: 25
Price: $80

 

*halloween wouldn't be halloween without a piece of art from Mike Egan

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Mike Egan is an American painter whose bright, graphic works turn mortality into carnival. Born near Pittsburgh in 1977, he grew up copying Guns N’ Roses covers and skateboard art, then earned a BFA in printmaking from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, learning wood-cut boldness from German Expressionists and José Guadalupe Posada. After college he worked at an airport, but the events of 9/11 pushed him toward funeral directing; for five years he served as an embalmer, spending long on-call nights alone in a Reading, PA apartment where he first painted skeletons and devils to stay sane.

Egan fuses that experience with mexican influenced folk, tattoo and religious iconography, laying down crisp black lines and flat, saturated acrylics on smooth Ampersand basswood panels. Coffins, sacred hearts, grinning cats and cartoon demons glow in hot pinks, oranges and toxic greens that lure viewers before darker themes surface. He calls the approach “contemporary folk,” celebrating death rather than mourning it, and insists bright palettes make macabre subjects feel playful and welcoming.

Since his 2006 debut in a Pittsburgh group show he has mounted more than twenty solo exhibitions, from Copro Gallery in Los Angeles to Tasmania’s Penny Contemporary, and released toys, apparel and the 2024 monograph A Life of Death Paintings. A 2025 museum retrospective at the McDonough Museum of Art cements his leap from mortuary back room to blue-chip walls, proving that a brush, a bag of homemade stencils and gallows humor can transform endings into irresistible eye candy.