Mari Lyons

How can I define myself as a painter? I am constantly becoming myself. I am by now—to paraphrase Hokusai, at the age of ninety—a middle-aged woman in love with painting.

As a very young painter I studied at Mills College with Max Beckmann, and his influence (an art of individuality, power, drama, energy, ambition) is always with me. Early, I loved the art of Cézanne and that of Rembrandt and Velasquez, and so many other painters; as I work alone in my studio the art that I love accompanies me, lives in me, goads me on, challenges me. My work today is figurative—I work from nature but I improvise and am never academic. My work comes out of the abstract painting that I did as a student, out of the idea of a constantly evolving view of reality, out of the idea that form is not fixed but fleeting, ephemeral. As Georges Braque says: "One must not imitate what one wants to create." Part of my task, as a painter, is to capture some aspect of reality and to make it—through the articulation of form and color, line and space, more lasting, more real than reality. In my art there is no certitude but the successful picture: that is the only academy, the only certainty.

I paint almost every day, and for me inspiration comes from the process of painting. As I concentrate on a subject it changes; as I proceed, I see new possibilities. This is why I work in series.

Mari Lyons
(S) 212-799-8238
(H) 212-362-7865