"Chautauqua" Contemporary Abstract Painting by G. Campbell Lyman

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Artist’s Statement: “I have decided to make available some work I did back in the 90's that I had put … Read more Artist’s Statement: “I have decided to make available some work I did back in the 90's that I had put aside because I didn't want to sell it at the time. You can tell that I had been looking at a lot of Eighties painters such as Donald Baechler, Julian Schnabel and Terry Winters. You can see a little influence from the Germans in this one as well. Already back then I was attracted to "painterly" painting, and even in the more abstract work I have been doing lately this attraction remains. But there was also this fascination with very rough, almost childlike line quality and figuration. And I was really into building up these complex surfaces with many layers of various kinds of paint, where the texture and surface sheen would shift in various parts of the painting. The naive and so-called "provisional" line quality has made a comeback in the past ten years; I still admire it. (Google the influential and very intelligent article in ArtNews by Raphael Rubinstein from 2012 for more on this . . it's called 'Provisional Painting Part 2' . . . we're not allowed to put links here.)"

On professional gallery-wrapped canvas, ready for hanging.

“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


(On recent 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 See less