Rosemary Lyons

Artist Statement

Rosemary K. Lyons’ work explores the relationship between language, nature, beauty, and ideas of success and failure. Her series of gold-leafed egg tempera paintings began with a question: What makes an artist a failure?

Inspired by encounters with medieval art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters, particularly the symbolic white lily in Robert Campin’s Annunciation, Lyons began painting single flowers against luminous gold grounds. To her, flowers represent one of nature’s most joyful and transcendent expressions.

Combining traditional materials such as gold leaf and egg tempera with unconventional surfaces—including cigar boxes and gypsum board—Lyons incorporates embossed words and phrases into her compositions. The words create a tension between the beauty of the flowers and the questions they raise, inviting viewers to pause, reflect, and reconsider their own assumptions about art, achievement, and meaning.

Biography

Rosemary K. Lyons is a contemporary artist whose work combines painting, language, and found materials to explore ideas of beauty, nature, perception, and human experience. Her practice frequently incorporates words and text as an integral visual and conceptual element.

Her gold-leafed egg tempera flower paintings began in response to her encounters with medieval and Renaissance art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters in New York. Inspired particularly by the symbolic use of the lily in Robert Campin’s Annunciation, Lyons developed a series of luminous paintings featuring individual flowers set against gold grounds and incorporating evocative words into their surfaces.

Working on materials including wood, cigar boxes, and gypsum board, Lyons creates intimate objects that combine traditional techniques with unconventional materials. Her works invite contemplation, using the beauty and symbolism of flowers as a starting point for broader questions about art, identity, success, and failure.

Lyons has exhibited extensively in New York and Western New York, including solo exhibitions at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Adirondack Lake Art Center, Olean Public Library, Phoenix Gallery, Gallery 128, and Viridian Artists Gallery. Her work has also been shown at El Museo, Ceres Gallery, Buffalo Art Studio, and Hallwalls.