Erik O'Eir

Erik O'Eir is a South African born artist living in Arklow, County Wicklow in Ireland. His art centres on studies of Neolithic art found on stone monuments throughout Ireland. To create this art, he uses a compound of his own creation which behaves like hard rock but can be moulded and carved to suit the work being done. A series of his works, called "Dendro-liths", are moulded to a similar shape to a painter's canvas resulting in sculptures that can be either left free standing or can be hung on a wall.

Erik O'Eir
Born
Erik Ivor Reinerstsen

23 April 1964

Background

Erik O'Eir (né Erik Ivor Reinertsen) was born on 23 April 1964 in the town of Springs, Transvaal in South Africa. Born as a fifth generation South African with ancestral links to Norway he moved to Ireland, where he adopted his "Irish" name of O'Eir by deed poll, and discovered an interest in Ireland's lost heritage.

Career

In the late 1980s, O'Eir developed an interest in growing trees from seed. It was this that led to his interest in making miniature ornamental trees and putting together the dishes for them to be kept and displayed in using re-constituted rock or purpose-built wooden containers. These containers would be decorated with patterns allowing the trees to reflect the artwork of "Standing Stones" and decorated "Kerb-stones" found throughout Ireland.

It was this project that led to the conception of the idea behind the Dendro-Lith series of works. His works mainly focus on the artwork in Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth as well as various sites throughout county County Meath e.g. Loughcrew Mountains.

Other projects of his include the research into how the sun was used to track the time of day as well as the time of year throughout the Stone Age. This particular research involves tracking the path the sun takes on a day-to-day basis with the hope of constructing a complete chart of the sun's path through the sky of Ireland.

Ultimately his interest in Stone-Age life and history that fuels his passion for his work. All of his projects are linked by his desire to understand Stone-Age humanity's coalition with nature to advance into the civilization we know today.

O'Eir's Dendrolith works received their first public appearance in the Riverside Gallery in Bridgewater Shopping Centre, Arklow, Co. Wicklow in Ireland in August 2013.[1][2]

His interest in Stone-Age art lead to him researching how earlier civilisations recorded the passage of time. By using gnomons he created rudimentary sundials that helped him to track how the movements of the sun could be used to tell the time of day. After several months it became possible to tell the seasons throughout the year based on the length of the shadow cast by the gnomon. Having combined his research with his artistic style O'Eir created a sundial that uses a gnomon cast from his little finger.

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References
  1. "Heritage Week" (PDF).
  2. "South African artist exhibits Stone Age art". Irish Independent.
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