Mari sought to be a “complete painter,” and over her long career worked regularly in charcoal, pastel, and oil – in her studio and plein air. She worked in a variety of genres – still life, cityscape, studio interior, landscape, portrait, self-portrait, abstraction, and figure. She rallied to Herman Melville's call in Moby-Dick, "I try all things, I achieve what I can.”
She studied at Mills College (with Max Beckmann and Fletcher Martin); Bard College (with Louis Schanker and Ludwig Sander, Stefan Hirsch), BA; Atelier 17 (with Stanley William Hayter); The Grand Chaumiere; Yale-Norfolk Art School (with Bernard Chaet and Gabor Peterdi); and at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (with Zoltan Sepeshy, Madison Fred Mitchell), MFA.
She exhibited widely throughout the country and one of her Montana Landscapes traveled to Tunis as part of the Art-in-Embassies Program of The U.S. Department of State. Lyons had fifteen one-person shows at First Street Gallery in New York City, along with one and two-person shows at Rider University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Kirkland Art Center (Clinton, NY), Windham Fine Arts (Windham, NY), Polari Gallery (Woodstock, NY), The Forsythe Gallery (Ann Arbor, MI); and more.
Mari was married to the writer and book publisher, Nick Lyons. Their family includes four children and four grandchildren. She maintained studios in New York City and Woodstock, New York. She Died April 3, 2016.
“Mari loved to paint large. Many of the paintings are six or seven feet in size. She called herself an “everyday painter” and her passion for painting never flagged. In her last weeks, Mari cried bitterly because she had so much love of life and felt life dwindling, and so many paintings yet to make that she know she would now never paint.” - Nick Lyons
Mari leaves behind hundreds of paintings and drawings. Mari Lyons work is in selected corporate and museum collections including the Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY) and most recently Baton Rouge General Medical Center.
In her own words:
“As I have no theories about the life I lead – I do not stop and ask a bird why he sings – I find it difficult to write about my painting. Painting is life to me: I have, God knows, many ideas about life, but I find it dismal to commit myself to any one of them. I find that I paint best when I am not thinking – that is when I am meeting the demands of the thing I am working on. Every painting sets up certain inner demands. One is constantly fighting to let the painting live on its own terms.” (1957)
Husband Nick organized her works and writings into a book:
“A Painter’s Life – Mari Lyons” published by Skyhorse Publishing in 2022.
www.marilyonsstudio.com
