Give Up Your Day Job?

Otago-born Peter Lyons has the attention of the American art world, with shows scheduled for Manhattan’s Richard York Gallery and the St Botolph Club in Boston. The 42-year-old security guard works nights at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts; by day he creates “eerie, luminous landscapes […] with the mystical stillness and celestial light of Vermeer.” An entirely self-taught artist, Lyons is being compared to realist masters Charles Sheeler and Caspar David Friedrich.