Bryden's plein air paintings include Mexico, Cuba, Alaska, Russia, New York City and the American West.

That same year he sold a watercolor out of a children's exhibit at the Norton Museum of Fine Art in West Palm Beach, Florida.

While making a living as an architectural renderer, Bryden continued to develop his technique as an artist by going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City where he spent hours copying masterpieces.

“The best place to study the art that interested me was in the museum… I set my easel up in front of one masterpiece after another, copying from Velasquez, Vermeer, Caravaggio, Titian, Hals, and of course Rembrandt.

The subjects of these paintings were people from across the ages who were also like us, and they were captured in believable human moments.”[3]It wasn't until 1988, when Bryden moved to Massachusetts, that his dream of supporting himself as a professional artist became a reality.

He continued to do architectural work but began selling more canvases as area art buyers discovered his paintings of local landscapes.

[2] Carl Little in Paintings of New England says “In his landscapes of the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts Lewis Bryden has been known to edit out all the accumulated debris of modern life, including cars, telephone poles, and road signs.”[2] A second focus is waterscapes.

Bryden's "river studio," a houseboat he bought as a place to paint, allows him to maximize his time working in nature and provides a unique viewpoint.

Bryden's background as an architect comes through in these works, but his depictions have a rich style that uses the light, irregular edges, and the texture of the paint to portray the building's character, rather than a strict draftsman-style representation of the form.

Most of Bryden's painting is done outdoors, which presents the obstacles of varied weather conditions and rapidly changing light.

Once this is ready, he takes the large canvas outside at the same time of day and in the same light conditions as in his memory, and he captures the colors.

I had permission from the Treasury Department to go to Cuba on a kind of cultural exchange, and I intended to use the time to do as many "plein air" paintings as I could, even though I only had five days.

The series, which explores the eternal summer of adolescence, was exhibited at the Brooklyn Public Library in 2004 and later at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts.

My own particular inspiration was a fascination with people in public places who are acting out their private dramas.”[3] One collector of Bryden's work, Michael Mao, has four of the series’ near life-size paintings displayed in one small room, creating the illusion of having walked into a cocktail party where people have already gathered.

“When Lewis borrows them for an exhibition it is as if some of the family has gone missing.”[6] Bryden's method for these pieces was inspired by the “crust of paint” on impressionist Claude Monet’s work “Water Lilies.” Bryden developed his own textured sculptural-style technique to create the surface texture for his Boardwalk paintings.

To “mimic the atmospheric conditions of a hot summer day,” Bryden mixes Neo Megilp with 50% stand oil to coat his canvas.

He goes after the tension that is built when they “recognize that the other person exists.”[7] With the bustle of the Boardwalk, Bryden relies on sketches and photographs as well as sessions with live models for his pieces.

During his visits, he does informal portraits and sketches in the public squares capturing plein air impressions of the moment.

In 1994, he put his work together into a series, “Tierra Insolita” which was formally presented in the exhibition at the Galleria Ixcateopan in Acapulco in that same year.

[8] Acapulco is his home base during these visits, but he takes trips with friends to remote, mountainous areas of Guerrero.

Writer Stephen Lockwood describes these paintings: “Every picture in the series is very direct, there is little for the eye to focus on, other than the facial characteristic of the subject.

His most recent commission, Nature as Muse, is a life-size bronze in the Mallinckrodt Garden at the art center called View in Old Forge, NY.