Esmond Lyons (b. 1950) American, "Stony Creek, NY" Vertical Landscape Oil on Board. Depicts a yellow-hued forest landscape with a creek and a hill in the distance, at a tranquil location a few miles northwest of the artist's home. Signed bottom right. Title on plaque on bottom front of frame. 

Overall: 20 x 17 1/2 in. 

Sight: 12 1/2 x 10 in. 

#7545 . 

Esmond Lyons was born in Glens Falls, New York in 1950. He had a habit of taking off on his own when he was a child, sometimes for weeks at a time, following roads wherever they would lead. Though they mostly took him through nearby Vermont and parts of the Catskills, he happened to encounter a group of plein air painters working on landscapes by a river when he was ten, and was immediately hooked. Finding that ordinary-sized canvases were too small for him, he began to paint larger and larger images, the first one being the inside of his bedroom, which he turned into a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. In 1968 he was up to be drafted into Vietnam, but was awarded deferment by enrolling in college, and he chose Florida State University in Tallahassee since it was “the furthest he had ever traveled.” He spent the majority of the Vietnam era taking courses in everything he could, and learned carpentry, furniture-making, and interior design in addition to painting, sculpture, photography, and art history. In the 1980s he married a woman named Danielle and together they traveled throughout the country and abroad extensively, fulfilling their mutual desire to see the world. When they decided to visit Lyons’ hometown in 1991, they discovered that a 19th Century church had been abandoned and the property was up for sale. They purchased it and turned it into their home studio, slowly rebuilding it by themselves over the next twenty years. During that same time, the town of Glens Falls, which had been hit hard by tough economic changes since the 1960s, spiraled further into dilapidation and debt, and people left in droves. In an effort to revitalize the town, Lyons joined forces with local entrepreneurs to create a mural-painting campaign that had reinvigorated the local economy, mainly through tourism. Today he continues to paint large works, mostly landscapes, as well as smaller pieces that he sells out of his studio.