Lyle James Salmi grew up enjoying the bountiful lakes, streams, and wilderness areas of northeastern Minnesota. It was the lasting impressions of this environment, along with living in the desert southwest, that were to later be infused with his understanding of contemporary abstract painting in order to lay the foundations for his abstract impressions of light and form. The artist enjoys part of the summer at his cabin on Bear Island Lake, a place that his family has owned since 1962. Salmi has also visited coastal Maine, and takes inspiration from the beauty of the natural settings.
Salmi’s paintings invoke a style that can be characterized as “Abstract Impressionism”, as they explore the reality somewhere between the physicality of a painterly surface and the suggestion of light and space somewhere beyond...
Each painting is an exploration of specific qualities of light as both an observed experience and as a phenomena of memory of place.
Along with the specificity of the type of light in each painting, there is also a sense of the universal in that the paintings are not depicting any particular view of scenery...rather they serve as an archetype to the process of painting, with the insistence of brushstrokes and color confirming the idea of the painting as an abstraction.
