Archonic III by Guy Lyman | Guy Lyman Fine Art

Guy Lyman

Archonic III, 2024

Wax, Oil, Acrylic, Charcoal

26 x 37 x 2 in

$2,000

Artist's Statement: "This recent painting was based on revisiting a small series of 'Archonic' paintings I made in the 90's, before my forms became more biomorphic. I was exploring simple geometric forms but with extremely complex surfaces, using wax, tar and other more exotic media in addition to oil and acrylic. Like those, this one incorporates an array of materials with all sorts of surface qualities. I think this one combines elegance with a sense of delight and playfulness."

(Comes framed in a black professional floater frame.)

You can see the artist's more recent paintings by searching on the artist's name or visiting our storefront.

Lyman's paintings up until now have all been sold privately, directly to collectors and designers, often before completion. They are in collections from Beirut, to London, to Madrid. There is no availability in the secondary (auction) market as of now.

These paintings have been placed not only in contemporary settings, but surprisingly in rooms of fine antiques as well, creating a tension between the classic and the contemporary -- like the abstract works you sometimes see in uber-traditional dining and living rooms of seasoned collectors. This is a large painting that will make its present felt throughout an entire room.

“Lyman’s work evolves restlessly, with the common elements generally being deft and unusual color choices that balance assonance and dissonance, and vestiges of the hand and facture purposely left in the paintings. The negative space is often so meticulously worked that it’s almost as if the objects – usually simple shapes – are there as much to complement the background as vice versa. Despite the often bold colors there is an elegance about his paintings that prevents them from being loud or decorative." - Artbeit Zeitschrift

“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.