Lindy Lyman grew up overlooking the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, amongst birch trees with panoramas to the East and to the West.

Jack-In-The-Pulpits in the woods, and Sputnik in the heavens instilled in her a continuing sense of wonder which she shares with others through painting, sculpture, and music.

She believes, that as artwork reflects the infinite, we are lifted up amongst the stars — and simultaneously — we are connected more deeply with the planet beneath our feet.

Beauty above me
Beauty below me
Beauty before me
Beauty behind me
Beauty within me, beside me,
Beauty all around me
It is finished in Beauty

— Diné

 

Lindy Lyman portrays a world in which boundaries are illusions. Anything that visually separates or limits suggests a force that merges or transcends. Starting out as a painter, she developed an expression based in gradients,washes, and stains that are absorbed by raw canvas or linen. Giving herself over to a process involving fluidity and resistance, Lyman brought forth resonant effects both sensory and numinous. As her art changed over the years, she introduced line drawings, deliberate patterns, and recognizable forms silhouetted within spectrums of floating color, harmonic tinctures from celestial and terrestrial paint boxes. Departing from a purely abstract realm, her figuration includes forest life and galactic phenomena — from wee beasties to twinkling stars — to call up the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Reminiscent of 17th-century mystical manuscripts, Lyman’s contemporary cosmology is populated by ancient symbols, modern technological wizardry, and talismanic words.

In her approach to mixed media, Lyman conceives of her materials as generative substances. Just as her effusive almost giddy compositions can scarcely be contained, individual components — fine art, craft, and sewing supplies, along with found objects — interact, transform, collide, and become one. The unfolding spiral of multiplicity and unity enacts the creative principle of our ever-becoming universe. Celebrating the life and soul of all being, Lyman can look upon the tumescence of a tree branch and envision a striped sylvan dancer or dryadic deity. Having an affinity with the animistic spirituality of world traditions, especially West African, the irrepressible artist finds power in the passage and adaptation of art, music, poetry, and folklore from one culture to another. Within the scheme of things, we creatures of consciousness are the latest phase of cosmic evolution, and our capacity to reach beyond and make meaning is the universe becoming self-aware — “twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

— Stephanie Grilli

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Artist in her studio

 

 

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In Beauty I, 22″ x 30″, 2005
© 2024 Lindy Lyman