Through experimentation with the techniques of painting, and the material of artists’ paint itself, Brendan Lyons uses the traditions and references of Western painting as a base from which to investigate various issues of interest.

Brendan Lyons' paintings are made of artists' paint alone*. The entire surface, structure, and support consist of paint. A cross-section cut between any two points of any one painting, would reveal only paint. The paintings are then fixed to the wall using further artists' paint as an adhesive. This leaves just one element (paint) attached to the wall.

The paintings are often placed directly into the urban environment, and they sit convincingly within a dual context of the contemporary built environment and the formal boundaries of Painting.The works consist of areas of dried and unsupported paint, which are then placed and situated in various locations. What may appear to be bricks, polythene sheets, various types of tape, builder’s orange safety netting, sheets of corrugated metal or cardboard, and other discarded packaging – are in fact just unsupported paint alone.

The paintings deal with issues of perception, implied space, context, surface, framing, language, signs, reference, history, time, givens, boundary, attachment, ambiguity and association. Oppositions such as internal/external; negative/positive; front/back; use/form; surface/structure; simple/complex. Undecidables such as painting and/or support; signifier and/or signified; representation and/or original; subject and/or object.

The works often form grids or rectangles, combined with formal waves, the layering of paint and blocks of colour. Windows add to the contextual base and reference points drawn from the historical traditions of painting and modernism.

The viewer can switch their visual and conceptual context from the pragmatic and mundane world of polythene, tape, netting, and discarded cardboard etc - to an interpretation of the material of artists’ paint (and its traditions) as a formal abstract painting. Switching back and forth creates a perceptual and conceptual blurring.

The paint is used to give an illusion of something other than itself – and yet this is not achieved by the traditional use of trompe l’œil techniques to convert two-dimensional flatness into a three-dimensional image. The paint takes on the form of the object itself. The shadows and forms are actual.

*any works on this site that contain elements other than artists' paint, are indicated as so in their description.

Brendan Lyons currently lives and works in Liverpool, England.