An Art Gallery on the Front Steps
By Eric Allen | February 10, 2012
In an artist colony like Provincetown, Massachusetts, it’s hard to walk a hundred feet without happening upon an art gallery or a store that has original art, usually locally generated.
This past fall Steve Lyons opened up a new venue for the sale of his art – The Front Steps Gallery. It’s not really a gallery, but the front steps of his home where his art is on display and for sale.
Although his artistic expression has been primarily as a writer, he has been an avid painter for over twenty years. Under pressure, he began cleaning out a storage area at his Commercial Street residence finding pieces of lumber accumulated and saved from a two year old renovation.
While his art has focused on many subject areas over the years, he decided that these lumber scraps were ideal for creating dune scapes and seascapes reflecting the beauty of Provincetown and Truro.
With his usual passion he became a man obsessed, going through scrap after scrap of lumber, creating a series of paintings. One series is of the dunes that are part of the National Seashore, and another are impressionistic paintings of the rural country roads found throughout Truro.
His collection entitled After Irene which depicts the turbulent sea that was the result of the early fall storm has proven very popular.
Having created his paintings he now was faced with the question of what he was going to do with them. Although the traffic on the street in late September had slowed considerably since the crush of summer, he decided to put a few pieces in his front steps with a homemade sign, pricing the paintings from $80 to $600 a piece.
Now the number of people in Provincetown in the fall is a far cry from the thousands that crowd the town’s street in the middle of summer. Despite that, he quickly sold out of the twelve to fifteen pieces he had painted, and began working through the lumber until he was forced to go to local lumber yard to get scraps and even buy lumber from them.
The sales off the front steps continued long after the tourist season ended. Some weekends he sold thirty to forty paintings with one person buying nine for Christmas gifts, and another buying five of the smaller ones to create a display along a ledge in their homes.
How does he feel about his unexpected success?
“As a painter, you are always gratified when someone appreciates your work which is why the response to my latest efforts are so deeply appreciated.”
Although the series was begun on scrap lumber, as homage to the woodblock print, he has recently begun work on museum quality canvas in response to requests from collectors.
Besides the obvious appreciation for the quality of his art, being compared to some of Provincetown’s best and most respected artists, Lyons has developed quality and affordable original art pieces that capture the beauty of the outer Cape.
Details:
Front Steps Gallery
108 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
(617) 549-1557
