Guy Lyman
This is part of a series of work I created using a complex mix of media to evoke age and tropes and paradigms of human culture. Our obsession with the new sometimes disturbs me, as I walk the streets of New Orleans and revel in its antique patina. I kept these paintings mostly small, as they took lots of layering and minute decisions as to luster and texture, and it was intimidating to think about scaling them up. Comes framed in a high-profile float frame.
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.