Guy Lyman

Aggregate #20 (very large), 2022
Charcoal, Wax, Oil, Acrylic
48 x 60 in
$3,960
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Artist's statement:

"This is from a series of paintings I have done based on the Old Master technique of beginning with a thin wash and progressively building up the layers of paint. It was painted in seven stages; you can still see traces of the original stage. What I essentially did was strip down this technique to its essence. So it's a painting about process rather than subject. The important things here are color, balance and texture. But I think the end result is a vibrant and happy painting. Very large, with a lot of wall power - the largest painting I have ever done. Looks more bluish in the secondary photos than in reality - shot in natural light and the camera adjusted towards the blue - it is more white in person. I can try to send you more accurate shots if you need them."

(On a previous series by the artist): “These paintings are a refreshing departure from the current abstract art world’s seemingly endless parade of fields of color with scribbles providing form, a style that is easily mimicked and has become a sort of “safe,” accessible go-to. There are confident decisions in these paintings appearing as commitments of strongly delineated forms and unexpected collisions of color that give the work a visceral, confident and playful soul, increasingly missing from contemporary expressionist abstraction. They are the paintings of a real painter rather than a decorative artist.”

ArtSeen, 2018


I have been painting for about 30 years, since before I was a dealer. I always was and remain most drawn to so-called “painterly” painters, whose interest is less in the formal aspects of painting than in the paint itself, and signs of the artist’s hand in its application. Initially I was drawn to paintings from the magical period between New York Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine and Cy Twombly. In the Eighties, it was New York neo-Expressionists such as Julian Schnabel, Terry Winters and Donald Baechler. As you can see, in the past few years my paintings have become more formal, but you can still see a lot of the hand in them. I grew up in New Orleans, lived in various places in the U.S. and Europe, then returned to "the Big Easy" to open my Magazine Street gallery, which I sold in 2017 before moving my art business entirely online. I still enjoy meeting fellow art collectors and painters when they visit New Orleans.