The Light Fantastic: Paintings on Glass by John Lyon Paul

Exhibition Website

Feb 17 2017 - Apr 19 2017

MacNider Art Museum

Mason City, IA

The Charles H. MacNider Art Museum is pleased to present The Light Fantastic: Paintings on Glass by John Lyon Paul.  Paul’s radiant paintings act like lenses into mysterious environments which the viewer can explore, drawn and released by the pulse of color and energy of line.  Within these paintings the word “abstraction” gives way to “freedom” as we surround ourselves with a vibration that is almost musical.

“Take a square. Within its confines draw a continuous, looping line. Fill the spaces with color. Create a world. Looking at John Lyon Paul’s paintings, we intuit a set of procedures and a language of form, but above all we glimpse the new worlds he conjures which distantly reflect our own. In his sculptures, the artist is deeply connected to the world we know, honoring our communal sense of both tragedy and hope. Paul creates sculptural devices that orient us to this axis of human experience.

Paul’s paintings are done on Mylar and on glass which gives them a fugitive quality, with the image forming and decaying before our eyes. Using acrylic paint and ink on the reverse side of the clear support, he employs a spectrum of painterly effects. The paint’s shifting densities reinforce the sense that we are looking through a window which holds the image and gives way to light which both illuminates and scours it.”             -Art Critic John Mendelsohn

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

  • Painting
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • John Lyon Paul

Exhibition Venues & Dates