EA12 Artist Highlight: Tyrus Lytton

Tyrus Lytton, A Clearing, 2012, Enamel + oil on aluminum, 16 x 30 inches
Photo courtesy of Tyrus Lytton

My work is a result of searching to illuminate the place in which I already find myself.   By exploring the interconnected features of daily life I am in a semi-continual state of attempting to understand, thinking I understand, and confusion.   My recent work has developed as an ecological system based upon changing conditions, nutrients, room, and other pressures and is allowed to evolve accordingly.   I see precedence in Richter, Kandinsky, Picasso, Duchamp, and Picabia.

Tyrus Lytton, Coming Down the Moutnain, 2012, Enamel + oil on aluminum
Photo courtesy of Tyrus Lytton

The inclusion of text in my work seeks to expose the non-visible image.  Language carries multiple meanings as part of its system as well as sounds that can be played dynamically against and in conjunction with the instruments of the non-verbal.   By exploring both the non-visual and the visual it provides a liminal area to explore an in-between-ness, a placeless-ness.   I allow myself to trust my experiences journeying from the known into the unknown.  The work is important because it is pleasurable.  It is important as a phone doodle, a child’s drawing, or a dog digging in the dirt.

Tyrus Lytton, ar K, 2012, Enamel + oil on aluminum, 16 x 30 inches
Photo courtesy of Tyrus Lytton

By working intuitively I don’t seek to avoid or exalt the mundane.  Paying attention to intuition is a realization that our bodies work with two brains: one of the central nervous system and the other the enteric nervous system.   It’s sometimes the brown matter that gets the grey matter where it needs to be.  Sometimes it’s just fertilizer.  Intuition is to skydive as rational is to parachute.  Through the intuition of abstract mark making and color choices I relate the more illusionistic along with text forming a tool set to triangulate my position. 

-Tyrus Lytton