Early in his career, during the decade he spent mostly living in Japan (c. 1958 — 68), Byars did in fact make paintings — or rather, large black ink drawings — featuring
dense iconic shapes that assume a kind of sculptural weight.
The mythic American landscape — long held to subtend the movement's biomorphic
shapes and totemic figures floating or swirling in
dense tonalities of
iconic color fields — assumed an Alexandrian cast in the West.