Introduction:

Stephen Lyman was a painter, a photographer, a writer and most of all an explorer. Lyman’s first limited edition print was published by the Greenwich Workshop in 1983. His work included paintings, sketches and photographs made during more than 35 trips into California’s Yosemite National Park, Alaska’s Denali National Park, Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the Canadian Rockies and Northern Idaho. Lyman would often spend an entire month alone in the wilderness seeking inspiration for his work. You will often find it hard to distinguish between what is a painting and what is a photograph.

Early Life and Inspiration:

Born in 1957 in Chicago, Illinois, Stephen Lyman was raised in the Idaho panhandle town of Lewiston, right on the border with Washington State.

His childhood was marked by family camping and fishing trips along rivers deep in the mountains that ignited his love for the outdoors. But he was more interested in exploring than in fishing; as Mark Mardon explains, “while the others sat for hours tending their lines, he would spend the time wandering along the riverbank, investigating nooks and crannies, an explorer in search of hidden beauties.”  These experiences ignited a lifelong passion for the wilderness, which later became the core of his artistic pursuits.

John Muir: A Guiding Light:

Much of this passion and appreciation for the natural world can be traced back to the influence on Lyman from the writings and philosophy of John Muir, a legendary figure in American environmentalism. While taking his first backpacking trip in Yosemite on a break from college and simultaneously reading Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra, he realized a new goal to devote as much of his art as possible to depicting the wilderness.  After graduating, he stayed in Pasadena for a few months, researching the life and work of Muir. The first biography he read was Linnie Marsh Wolfe’s Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir.”  Although he initially painted wildlife and landscapes, it was Yosemite National Park, championed by John Muir, that truly captured his heart and imagination. Stephen Lyman wrote, “I’m adopting Muir’s language of the earth as alive, to be treated with respect and love, not as a material resource or something for us to conquer.”

As Mark Mardon notes in Lyman’s book Into the Wilderness: An Artist’s Journey, “John Muir was Lyman’s spiritual mentor: with an artist’s eye, Steve sees the mountains and valleys as Muir did, vivid in shadow and light.” Lyman’s publisher, Greenwich Workshop, states: “John Muir, one of the world’s most important naturalists and conservation writers, was an important influence in Lyman’s life. Many contend that Lyman did with art what Muir did with words. They considered the artist to be the living personification of Muir. For both men, the great outdoors were pure, sanctified places – their special ‘cathedrals’ providing spiritual renewal.”

Famed wildlife artist Bev Doolittle wrote:  “I think of Steve [Lyman] as the other John Muir.”

John Muir, often referred to as “The Father of the National Parks,” was a Scottish-American naturalist, environmentalist, writer, and the author of influential books such as My First Summer in the Sierra and The Yosemite. His advocacy for the preservation of wilderness areas and his role in establishing Yosemite National Park deeply resonated with Lyman. Stephen Lyman said, “John Muir wrote, ‘Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.’ I know exactly what he meant. All my paintings have their origins in my experience and perception of beauty in the wilderness.” Stephen Lyman’s portrait of John Muir was included in his Firelight Chapbook, 1992, which also included Lyman’s personal tribute to Muir, and the book is filled with Lyman’s selection of numerous John Muir quotes. Stephen and his wife Andrea named one of their two sons “Muir.”

After his death, Andrea wrote in the Foreword to Stephen’s Yosemite Journal:

“As an avid fan of the nineteenth century naturalist John Muir, Stephen found out all he could about Muir’s life and his experiences in Yosemite and the High Sierras of California. He had all of Muir’s works and everything written about him. He visited his home in Martinez and sought out people who were experts on his life, asking questions and taking notes and photographs. On a meager college student’s budget, he even bought an original photograph ot John Muir with his colleagues in the early days of conservation and wilderness protection. He eventually collected all of Muir’s writings, many of which were first editions. He considered these some of his most valuable possessions and referred to them time and time again throughout his life as he did research for his paintings or just to become inspired. Steve would seek out the very locations mentioned in Muir’s writings so he, too, could delight in the magnificence and wonder of God’s creation. More than one person has noted similarities in their demeanor and physical appearance. The same twinkle in their clear blue eyes beheld the same natural wonders.”

In Stephen’s Yosemite Journal, he gave an example of his seeking out people who were experts on John Muir:

“I stopped along the way in Mariposa California to make a visit to william and Maymie Kimes, the bibliographers and knowledgeable students of John Muir. I was shown many of their Muir treasures, much to my delight as well as theirs and their library contained first-edition Muir books and books relating to him. The complete run of Sierra Club Bulletins since January 1893, various editions of Picturesque California, and many more treasures were laid before me for a true feast. I was honored to sign their “house book” such as Charles F. Lummis had, photograph their collection of Muir photos for my prospective book and even photograph them and their library.”
– From Stephen Lyman’s Yosemite Journal, June, 1979, after leaving art school in Pasadena on the way to Idaho via Yosemite.

In Firelight, Lyman wrote this tribute to Muir:

John Muir, a true friend

“I identify with John Muir. He received sustenance from the wilderness, learning lessons and secrets from the earth, then wrote about them to bring others into an awareness and appreciation of wilderness.”  …I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness,” he wrote to a friend. Why? Because there is healing, beauty, peace. Invaluable things. Impossible to put a dollar value on. Muir saw the world as Creation for its own sake.

“He respected all living things as being created for their own existence, instead of the prevalent belief of the day that the world was made only for man’s use.

“Muir kept a childlike innocence within him all his life.

“Discovering little things of beauty would always capture his attention. The pattern of a grasshopper track, the delicate pose of a flower, the unexpected companionship of a frog in his cabin were simple joys he delighted in. His forays into the mountains were nearly always on foot, sometimes for weeks, with nothing more than a loaf of bread of bread, some tea, and a blanket. “This is true freedom…”  he called it, ” …a good practical sort of immortality.” In Muir I have found a true friend.

“He had a passion for wilderness and expressed it primarily through writing. I express mine through painting.

– Stephen Lyman 

Artistic Journey:

Lyman’s artistic journey began with a desire to capture nature’s grandeur on canvas. Lyman’s desire to share his admiration for the outdoors was strong, but he enrolled in the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena, California, to learn more about the commercial art field. He started his career as a commercial illustrator but soon found that commercial art wasn’t for him. After studying and researching John Muir’s writings and biography, he  returned to Idaho, where he spent two years exploring and developing his own style of painting, endeavoring to create the most beautiful wilderness paintings he could. His style was quite different from the early 19th century wilderness painters Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and even Muir’s friend William Keith. Steeped as they were in artistic romanticism (Bierstadt and Hill were prominent figures in the Hudson River school of painting), they infused their landscapes with soft, warm light, casting mountains, forests, and animals in an often exaggerated ethereal glow, an Edenic character. In stark contrast, as Mark Mardon explains, these “are a far cry from the rugged, storm-swept precipices, forest interiors, rocky streams, and lake shores that dominate Steve’s work. In his detailed, dramatic representations of wilderness and wild creatures, the viewer finds not transcendent lyricism, but a dynamic realism.”

For Lyman, the landscape is never static; it is always in motion, as plants, animals, and water are continually flowing across the landscape. The wilderness world is a dynamic process, the sum of many parts, all intricately entwined, evoking Muir’s understanding that “Everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks… While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood…in Nature’s warm heart.”

Likewise, Lyman consciously chose to not incorporate people in his scenes. While other Western artists may show mountain men or Native Americans, Lyman says “We’re destroying wilderness rapidly. I want to portray an ideal that’s opposite of what’s really happening today.  I’m not saying that humans shouldn’t be in the wilderness, or couldn’t fit, or don’t belong. I know we can. For hundreds of thousands of years, people lived in wilderness and didn’t ruin it. But in the last 150 years, we’ve developed the power to destroy it. I feel I’m best at portraying a wilderness without a human influence or intrusive presence…  I want to make my images timeless and ageless, to portray the depth of wisdom and longevity the wilderness possesses. It’s constantly being reborn.”

As Mark Mardon notes, “Steve has trained himself to look beyond the obvious. He is as much inclined to turn his attention to the seemingly insignificant plants, animals, and rock formations he encounters along the trail as he is to focus on charismatic ‘megafauna’ such as bears and wolves. He prefers to consider himself to be not a ‘wildlife artist’ per se, but a painter of wilderness.”  

For example, in commenting on his painting “Last Light of Winter,” Lyman wrote: “Typically, in my landscape paintings, wildlife plays an incidental role in the image. The flying Canada geese are placed in front of the dark trees instead of silhouetted obviously against the sky. This delays their discovery until the viewer gets a first impression of the spectacular winter sunset. So, too, with the deer and the crescent moon. I also try to suggest something that underlies the physical, visible landscape. Here the wind rippled the waves.”  And so in much of his artwork, the animals are not that obvious, just as they are so often camouflaged in Nature, and by the time you finally see a black bear or coyote hidden against a black rock or a dark copse of trees, you have the uncanny feeling the animal has been watching you the whole time.  And in some images, Lyman invites you to see the fish or frogs under the water, even when not expressly depicted.

Yosemite: A Muse of Infinite Beauty:

Yosemite National Park, with its dramatic cliffs, cascading waterfalls, and pristine wilderness, provided Lyman with an unending source of inspiration. His paintings conveyed the park’s splendor, evoking a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. To fully appreciate Yosemite’s magnificence, Lyman often ventured into the wilderness, painting en plein air to capture the nuances of light, color, and atmosphere, mirroring John Muir’s love for exploration and discovery.

On one of these lengthy Yosemite excursions, as night fell as he tended his campfire, he first conceived of making a campfire the subject of a painting.  “It seemed like an ideal element for a landscape painting, since anyone who has spent time in the wilderness has pleasant memories of sitting in front of a warming blaze, watching sparks drift up into the night sky.”

A camp-fire is an intensely spiritual experience, as you connect not just with something in our primordial past, but also with the ancient light from the Sun that fell on Earth many centuries ago.  When you toss wood onto a camp-fire, wrote Muir, “the bossy boles and branches ascend in fire to heaven, the light slowly gathered from the suns of centuries going again to the sun…. Sparks stream off like comets or in round starlike worlds from a sun. They fly into space in milky ways of lavishness, then fall in white flakes feathery and pure as snow.”