It was this experience, visiting museums in NYC, that triggered Lyman’s interest in collecting art, relying on his personal taste and an eye for “beauty” to guide him, rather than any formal study of the art market, and no academic training in studio art.
“I dabbled in painting. I was not even showing my own work. I was making my career as a writer.” That “dabbling” gradually became all-consuming, and Lyman describes the evolution of his own aesthetic sensibility. “I have been painting for about 30 years, since before I was a dealer. I always was and remain most drawn to so-called ‘painterly’ painters, whose interest is less in the formal aspects of painting than in the paint itself, and signs of the artist’s hand in its application.
Initially, I was drawn to paintings from the magical period between New York Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, and Cy Twombly. In the 80s, it was New York neo-Expressionists such as Julian Schnabel, Terry Winters, and Donald Baechler.”