Bill Lyons

William Lyons was born in Maastricht, Holland, in the house built by his grandfather, a painter and art teacher. Lyons spent his early years moving between the U.S. and Europe. The great architecture of France — the stained glass of Chartres cathedral, the buttresses and spires of Notre Dame— awakened his sense of color and form. Seeing the work of the major abstractionists at the 1966 Venice Biennale sharpened his sense of what it means to be an artist.
v Upon his return to the U.S. in 1968, he hitchhiked across the country to San Francisco, where the psychedelic movement was at its height. Inspired by the visionary art of the Haight-Ashbury, he began to draw and paint. After a year, he returned to the East Coast and lived for a time in New York City, taking in its great museums —the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Lyons began to sell his art while attending Monmouth College in New Jersey. Upon graduating in 1972, he moved for the first time to Tallahassee and continued painting. In the mid–70s, Lyons moved to Venice, Florida, and developed a style that foreshadowed his present methods.

Returning to Tallahassee for graduate school, Lyons continued to paint, but more sporadically. Here followed a time of gestation. In the late 1990s, Lyons picked up his brush again and entered a period of intense creativity. His art began to enter private collections in Tallahassee, Miami, California, and London.
Lyons says, “In San Francisco I learned to create freely from imagination. Later I learned how to channel and discipline my imagination by using the methods of the classical abstractionists. A painting for me must allow free rein to fantasy and invention while also observing the utmost rigor of composition so it expresses itself forcefully and directly. A work of art created by the human spirit embodies truth and beauty. This is what I strive to accomplish.”