Guy Lyman
Artist's Statement: "I typically paint in a completely abstract manner, but when I began putting the paint down here the work quickly began to move towards figuration: not so much anything familiar, but certainly "of" something, and in this case, a sort of sprouting, blooming, expressive figure that I named 'Oracle.' I noticed that as it progressed it took on some qualities of Jean Michel Basquiat's paintings - specifically, the line quality, colors, and edging towards graffiti or cartooning. I find it exuberant and light-hearted, a proper antidote to these grim times."
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.