Robert Lyons | One Eye Crying
April 5 - June 2, 2018
First Thursday Reception: April 5, 6 - 8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, April 21, 11 am
Photographer Robert Lyons is best known for his richly complex photographs of Africa and Egypt. His color series One Eye Crying focuses specifically on Easthampton, Massachusetts, a location steeped in art historical and personal significance for the artist. The light and landscape of Northeastern America has long been a source of inspiration of painters and photographers, most famously idealized by generations of painters of the Hudson School among others.
Lyons title for his ongoing series, One Eye Crying, refers to a German idiom meaning "being torn between" or "being of two minds". The title reflects a state of irresolution the artist knows well as an American who lived outside of the states for much of his career. Lyons creates beguiling pictures from his hometown that appear both familiar and exotic through his lens.
A sense of discovery resonates through the series as Lyons captures authentic moments of connection and recognition in his portraits, still lifes and landscapes. Set among overgrown vertiginous backgrounds, cloudy grey parking lots or forgotten wooded roadsides, Lyons makes pictures that inspire curiosity and longing for the stories his subjects could tell.
Robert Lyons received his BA in Photography form Hampshire College (Amherst, MA) and his MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). Lyons’ work has been shown internationally for forty years, including exhibitions at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, (Kansas City, MO), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA) and the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA). He is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has published several books, including Who Decides?, Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide, Another Africa, and Egyptian Time. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA) and Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA).