Mari Lyons
How can I define myself as a painter? I am constantly
becoming myself. I am by nowto paraphrase Hokusai, at the
age of ninetya 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 figurativeI 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 itthrough 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
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Model in the Studio — Sandy, (detail) oil
on canvas, 56.5x73, 2004 |
An Event in the Studio,
oil on canvas, 67x70.5, 2006 |
Still Life with Drawing Table, oil on
canvas, 30x41, 2005 |
Green Still Life, (detail) oil on canvas,
48.5x36.5, 2005 |
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