Matthew Lyons is a Nottinghamshire-based artist,
living and working in the town of Beeston.
Matthew spent the past year painting twenty portraits of local people from his home town of Beeston.
Why did Matthew start this project? He says, “I wanted to do a project where I could meet the people I was painting, get a sense of who they were and capture that in a portrait. During lockdown I was buying photos from art schools to paint, but you are painting people who you do not know anything about . . . it’s just not the same. I prefer not to ask people to 'sit', painting them from life, I take lots of reference photos and create the painting I want from them . . I’m not recreating the photos, but constructing a portrait using the photos as a reference.”
The original paintings from the exhibition are now for sale here.
Limited edition prints of the portraits are available here.
