"Layer Cake", Contemporary Abstract Painting Painting

Artist’s Statement: “I have been making available some paintings I did earlier in my career that I have held on to for one reason or another. This one has complex layers of thick-on-thin, and a cool, sort of minty palette that came together really beautifully I thought. I did these by starting with larger areas of thinned paint, then progressively worked on top of them in successively smaller areas while thickening the paint, and retaining the dripping where it worked." On professional gallery-wrapped canvas, ready for hanging. (On a later series by the artist): “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 “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