Campbell Lyman has been painting for over 30 years, influenced chiefly by more “painterly” and gestural painters. Particular influences include Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel.
“I have always liked seeing the hand in paintings,” he says. “I’m not too interested in either conceptual, minimalist or hard-edged art. Some of my favorite paintings are the “Combine” paintings Robert Rauschenberg created in the 1950s, which include found objects as well as gestural brushstrokes. And the paintings Twombly was doing with the blobs and squiggles of paint in the late 50’s are also favorites.”
Recently, Lyman has created a series called “Rosetta” that channels some of these artists, but veers almost towards graffiti. “The Rosetta paintings are to me urban, rough and spontaneous, a lot less formal than a lot of work I have done over the years,” explains Lyman.
“I had been working on some much more formal paintings that look almost like abstract still lifes,” says Lyman. They had begun to tighten up on me and I needed to do something to loosen up my strokes and more from the gut; that’s where the Rosetta paintings came from.”
You can see the Rosetta paintings on Leroy Miranda’s website at (link to page).