Conversations with Randall Lake

Today we’d like to introduce you to Randall Lake.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I didn’t know I had any talent for art until the age of twelve. My parents sent me to a Swiss boarding school in the French-speaking sector of Switzerland, and my Belgium art teacher brought me the knowledge that I had a gift. When I went to college, my parents wouldn’t consider having me go as an art major. Being the dutiful son I was, I majored in English literature, which guarantees unemployment.

Actually, this turned out to be very fortunate for me as my degree, helped me get a job teaching English at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris. While in Paris and teaching at the Sorbonne, I was able to continue to work on my craft as an artist. I return to Paris in the winter of 1970 and I couldn’t find employment. I called my good friend in Cape Town, South Africa, and he said, come here, you can stay with me, and we will find you a job.

Before I left, I made an application for a one-year studio grant from the American Center for students and artists. The competition was sometime in May, the secretary of the American Center reached me in Cape Town to tell me I was awarded a studio for one year. The studio became available in June away from my skeptical parents, and being on my own, I thought if I was good enough to have been awarded the Studio grant, I will become an artist.

Three years later, I returned to California with a wife and a child and as a painter. As my undergraduate degree was in English, I had to get two years as a non-matriculated grad student, building up my portfolio of work until it got me into the graduate program. The reason I chose the University of Utah: When I was teaching at the Sorbonne, there was an English professor from the University of Utah. He knew I was frustrated trying to get academic, classically realist training.

At the time in Paris, everyone was looking at the modern art movement happening in New York which was mostly abstract. He told me I should go to the University of Utah because it is because in its art department there was a renowned portraitist name Alvin Gittins. This man, this diamond in the rough, taught me the skills with which I could make a living. He was prejudiced against me, assuming I would arrive in a top hat and sporting a silk tie.

He told me you’re too old (I was 26), you are too stiff, and you just don’t have it. I persisted, and I finally was admitted to the Master’s program. Another incredible break was that I was fortunate enough not to get a teaching job. When you teach full-time, you have no energy left over to paint for a gallery.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The life of an artist is precarious in the extreme.

When you are young, you are too stupid to know how difficult it will be. This is a good thing. There is so much rejection as an artist from galleries and the public. I have had the fortune to make a living doing what I love, but it came with forming thick skin.

I had to preserve through the doubts and disappointments. A great piece of advice I received from Alvin Gittins is, “Before you sign a painting, ask what your worst enemy will think about it.”

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
In my career, I have divided my art into two categories: Bread art, which is sellable art such as landscapes, portraits, interiors, and still lives.

And the other is blue art: Art that is personal to me that no one else was painting subjects like the aids epidemic, a full standing of a drag queen, a painting entitled “Weimar Berlin” inspired by the film the Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich but instead of her sitting on a beer keg it was a young man in a waistcoat, long gloves and stockings top hat and behind him in sepia color is Hitler shaking the hand of President Hindenburg when he became chancellor of Germany in January 1933.

I am very proud of this one and my reasoning: anyone can paint a complicated still life or portrait, but these paintings were personal to me. From my own life experiences, my all-time hero and inspiration for much of my work were Vincent van Gogh because he never sold a painting, he painted his life, his bedroom, his shoes, his books, and ordinary things. I am proud that I never chased the art market, except for one disastrous attempt at western art.

Western art was all the rage when I was in school, so I got a model and looked at a photograph of a Native American and painted my model as one. Aficionados of Native Americans pointed out that the clothing was half Zuni and half Navajo. It was a good lesson for me that I’ll never forget, stick to what I know and paint things that I want to paint, not what is selling well in the galleries.

I once read an article by an old French art critic from the 1930s that something along the lines of artists should be well rounded in their subjects so I made it a priority to paint all subjects such as portraits, landscapes, interiors, still-lifes, seascapes, and cityscapes. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into a single subject or genre.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My child was not a happy one.

One good memory I had was about a best friend who would come to Balboa Island in the summers to stay with his grandfather at the end of my street.

The day he was to arrive I took my dinghy to the bay and rode all over knowing, when I got back, he would be there.

Contact Info:

• Email: Info@randalllake.com
• Website: www.randalllake.com
• Instagram: @Randalllakeart
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/Randallakeart
• Twitter: @Randalllakeart
• Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCPJnlqG8TfzYS3JMyjzuEog