Show Preview | Burdick & Lyon - Southwest Art Magazine

Los Angeles, CA
Maxwell Alexander Gallery, November 16-30

Scott Burdick, Holy Procession, oil, 20 x 20.

This story was featured in the November 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art November 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

VISITORS TO this month’s new show at Maxwell Alexander Gallery, titled A Closer Look—Home and Abroad, can visually travel to four countries on three continents while viewing some 16 new figurative works by artists Scott Burdick and Susan Lyon. The husband-and-wife duo devote themselves to exploring the world, as well as areas near their home in rural Quaker Gap, NC, in search of compelling people. They then tell their subjects’ stories by portraying their faces and forms in various mediums; Lyon works in charcoal and mixed media on paper while Burdick works in oil on canvas.

Both artists are on hand for the show’s opening reception on Saturday, November 16, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., and also give a two-hour portrait demonstration with a live model that same afternoon in the gallery. In addition, Lyon signs copies of Visions and Voyages, a full-color book on her earlier work; Burdick also signs two novels he has published, Nihala and The Immortality Contract.

: Susan Lyon, A Strong Will in a Little Body, charcoal, 14 x 11.

: Scott Burdick, Tibetan Sisters, oil, 40 x 30.

: Susan Lyon, Selene, Goddess of the Moon, charcoal/acrylic, 21 x 24.

“What makes Scott’s and Susan’s art unique, besides their technical ability, is their willingness to go find their subjects, sometimes traveling throughout the world to remote places and painting local models who never sat for a painting before,” says gallery director Beau Alexander. “They get to know them and are able to capture them in a powerful way.”

One case in point is Burdick’s TIBETAN SISTERS, an enthralling scene of two young girls he met and photographed early one morning as they har-vested barley on the slopes of the Himalayas, where he and Lyon spent a month about a decade ago. “I feel honored to have met them among the mountains of their ancestors,” says the artist, “and I wonder how much longer such scenes will exist.” Burdick depicts such subjects in a bravura, highly painterly style, his thick and energetic brush strokes often appearing abstract on close inspection while coalescing into realistic scenes when viewed from just a few feet away.

: Scott Burdick, Divya’s World, oil, 40 x 26.

: Scott Burdick, Helping Hand, oil, 12 x 12.

: Scott Burdick, Holy Waters, oil, 40 x 30.

Lyon, meanwhile, has lately been creating art with a more ethereal look. Her SELENE, GODDESS OF THE MOON, for example, portrays a musician they know from Winston-Salem, NC, a short drive south of their home. “I’ve wanted to paint her for the longest time,” says Lyon of the striking young woman, whose faithfully detailed portrait was initially done primarily in charcoal wash and charcoal pencil on paper. The lifelike rendering of her face and hair, however, were only the beginning. Using gold acrylic paint, Lyon then added oversized orbs for earrings and traced fine circular lines and broad washes that create an abstract sense of nearby planetary bodies and distant stars. “It feels like an indefinable, timeless space,” adds the artist. Even Lyon’s less complex images, such as A STRONG WILL IN A LITTLE BODY, possess a spirit that stands apart from the everyday world.

Though the two artists’ approaches are strikingly different from each other, they nonetheless enjoy a complementary relationship. Each artwork strives to express, in its own deeply personal way, our shared humanity. —Norman Kolpas

contact information
213.275.1060
www.maxwellalexandergallery.com