{"id":424,"date":"2010-01-06T02:30:39","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T08:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2010\/01\/06\/randall-lake\/"},"modified":"2023-11-04T14:23:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T20:23:57","slug":"randall-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/randall-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Randall Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Randall

Randall Lake stands in front of his SLC studio, photo by Shawn Rossiter<\/p><\/div>\n

How does an Orange County boy, a homosexual with a growing reputation as a painter in Paris, become one of Utah\u2019s most known and venerated painters? By obeying the rules. These days, that is exactly what\u00a0Randall Lake\u00a0<\/a>is not doing. Lake grew up in affluent circumstances. In the \u201960s he delighted the French where his talent as a painter was recognized, but while there this young, homosexual man joined the Mormon Church. He married and had five children. He did everything a Mormon father was expected to do, except be honest, especially to himself. Why? To avoid familial catastrophe he says \u2013\u201cso I could encase myself like some toxic substance from Chernobyl, that I would protect myself from ever having to deal with this.\u201d Lake\u2019s days of pleasing others, playing by the rules, keeping up appearances, is long over and today he does not care whose toes he steps on.<\/span><\/p>\n

The paintings Lake is working on now are angry pieces, far removed from the dainty teacups and colorful landscapes for which he is known. In a series of shocking symbolic narrative works, ones he knows will offend, he is dealing with his lifetime as a homosexual. He is angry. He is angry at the artifice of living in the closet. Angry at the rules that were placed on him, and that he placed on himself; and almost 25\u00a0years after his first love hung himself rather than disclose his homosexuality to the world, he is angry at the repression he feels has tempered his happiness. \u201cI have always been ashamed of being gay because my family let me know in no uncertain terms that that was unacceptable. I joined the LDS Church initially because it held out the promise that I could be straight. You finally find your way to religion and it\u2019s not because you want to go to heaven but it\u2019s because you\u2019ve been to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lake grew up in a wealthy, non-religious family in Orange County. He says that he has known since he was 8\u00a0or 9\u00a0that he was gay. \u201cI am a child of the \u201940s and \u201950s. The self-loathing, I fought my whole life against it. I was embarrassed by it. I was horrified.\u201d His parents divorced when he was 11, and the following year when his mother took a trip abroad she brought him, the youngest, with her. He was placed in a Swiss boarding school, where he had his first homosexual experiences.<\/p>\n

Knowing his homosexuality would never be accepted by his family, he continued to live a life in the closet. He went to college in Boulder, Colorado, where he studied English and began painting. He also had a relationship with a roommate that left him \u201cheartbroken.\u201d During college Lake had spent his junior year abroad in Paris, and after college he returned there \u2014 to get over his broken heart and also to get painting out of his system (before moving on to a more reputable career).<\/p>\n

While in Europe he returned to the village in Switzerland where the now-defunct boarding school had been located. He ran into his old English professor, who invited him to join him at a Baptist commune in the area. Here Lake became a Christian.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After a month he returned to Paris to continue painting.\u00a0At the request of a friend he accompanied her to a Mormon Church service. The friend left uninterested, but Lake stayed for the testimony meeting. He was moved by a woman who gave \u201ca very personal and authentic testimony.\u201d He kept going back. \u201cI thought, \u2018There\u2019s something here. Either it\u2019s the biggest bullshit you\u2019ve ever heard or it\u2019s true.\u2019\u201d He went for a long time as an investigator. Lake says the LDS Church was attractive to him because he instinctively felt it was very \u201chomophobic\u201d and he could use it to protect himself from ever \u201cjumping the fence.\u201d It would be his path to normalcy.<\/p>\n

One of the LDS Church\u2019s strategies for normalcy at the time included heterosexual marriage as a cure for homosexual behavior. Lake says he was influenced by Spencer W. Kimball\u2019s book\u00a0The Miracle of Forgiveness<\/em>\u00a0and the idea that if he put himself in a different environment he could change who he was. He renewed a relationship with a Mormon girl he had known when he was a teenager. He told her about his homosexuality and she believed it was something that could be overcome. They married in Paris in 1971.<\/p>\n

In his student days, Lake had worked as a Pop artist, but after Paris he returned to the States to study classical figure painting with Al Gittens. So it was in Utah that he began building an international reputation creating landscapes, portraiture, and still lifes, mostly in a 19th-century vein. \u201cLife and art go together as an evolution,\u201d he says about his painting. \u201cI have always been a well-mannered, well-behaved, conservative painter. I\u2019m not a trail-blazer because if you\u2019re gay all you want to be is to be normal. One of the appeals that Mormonism had for me was that it was normal. I could drive my station wagon and my wife could bake pies and we could have kids. They were offering you normalcy, something I could never be.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1981 Lake\u2019s father died. \u201cI would never have come out had my father been living. By that time I realized it would never change, I would forever have dreams about men.\u201d In 1984, inspired by the biographies of gay artists in the 19th century, he devised a plan where he could pursue his sexuality \u201cabroad\u201d while maintaining his life of normalcy. He joined a gallery in San Francisco, where he thought he could go on weekends for openings and pursue homosexual affairs. His plan was conceived too late, however. The AIDS epidemic was exploding and he found it difficult to initiate liasons.<\/p>\n

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In Salt Lake City he began attending an informal gathering of ex-Mormon and Mormon gays, a quiet affair designed as an alternative to the bar scene. At the first meeting he recognized someone: the organist in his LDS stake. Lake says the idea of \u201cfalling in love\u201d was unexpected but he fell \u201clike a ton of bricks.\u201d The two managed to carry on an affair for a year. \u201cStill the best year of my life,\u201d he says. But in January of 1986 Lake\u2019s lover committed suicide by hanging himself in his basement.<\/p>\n

When the family buried him in his temple clothes, obliterating the memory of who he really was, Lake said he had had enough. It \u201cturned me from tin to lead. . . I vowed that I would never lie ever again about being gay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lake went through a Mormon Church court and was excommunicated, ending 16\u00a0years of living a lie. He remarks that the members of the ward treated him well. \u201cI never had anyone spurn me,\u201d and his career as an artist in the state continued to move forward. He has become one of the best known and well-respected painters in Utah.<\/p>\n

With his new body of work, Lake may be putting that all at risk. The days of Mediterranean seashores are past, no more portraits, no more teacups. He is turning to dark, angry narrative work, but he says he has no choice. When he broke up with a lover in 2004 he says he entered a period of economic, emotional and spiritual decline \u2014 a slump he says he is only now getting out of with this new body of work. \u201cI can\u2019t get up in the morning and get excited about a teacup or a landscape anymore, I\u2019ve been there, I\u2019ve done that.\u201d Now Lake is using his brush \u2013 \u201clike a cudgel\u201d \u2014 to express his personal self.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This new work is fueled by rage. Some of it is directed outward, toward issues like the war in Iraq, but most of it is about his personal experience. Of the six lovers Lake has had he says two have been devout Mormons and both have killed themselves. The new work, he says, is a \u201cmemorial\u201d to these two. In one work Lake uses a Renaissance structured altarpiece and standard Latter-day Saint iconography to create a challenging composition that anyone familiar with the LDS Church will be able to decipher. A generic church authority speaks from the podium, counseling methods for \u201covercoming\u201d homosexuality. A gay man hangs from a noose at each end of the lateral section of a cross, having hung themselves there, dressed in undergarments sacred to the LDS faith. Men who have shot themselves in the head lie in the foreground. In the framework of a traditional crucifixion painterly structure, Lake constructs visual metaphors that when seen in this context, are cacophonous and abrasive. The poetry usually found in his works is gone.<\/p>\n

Lake says he is trying to depict the \u201ccasualties\u201d of the church\u2019s strategies to cure gays. \u201cI am trying to call them [the LDS Church] on this and say \u2018You people don\u2019t have a clue.\u2019\u201d His art is directed at the power structures in the Mormon church. For the individuals he has known he still speaks with warmth and regard. \u201cI will not sit through a lunch bashing the church. I love the Mormons I know . . . but I have to say what I have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not the first time Lake\u2019s work has turned to the personal. In a 2003 exhibit at Art Access he exhibited a body of work dealing with his personal life. These could be poetical. Many featured one of his lover\u2019s dying from AIDS, one painting showing him being lifted up to heaven by an angel. Others were angry and political. In one he portrayed Gayle Ruzika, head of the Eagle Forum, as the Medusa.<\/p>\n

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These latest works \u2014 still in progress \u2014 will likely be the most violent and visceral of Lake\u2019s personal works. But it is unlikely this new body of work will be embraced by many. They are too deliberate, desperate even. They are ugly and offensive, but meant to be; but they can also seem contrived and plebian \u2014 a digression for a man of Lake\u2019s aesthetic accomplishments. But the work is for the artist. How critics respond to it means little to him. This is a time to purge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis painting is 34 years of sitting on the bench. This painting is a product of rage. At 62, I have nothing to lose . . . this probably isn\u2019t going to do anything but I\u2019ve got to get it out of me. I told myself, \u2018Exercise your right for free speech.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a mode of self-sacrifice, as Lake takes his celebrity and throws it in the faces of those he thinks this will cause offense to. Sadly these works will likely have little effect, as subtlety, especially in art, is far more effective. But Lake is the artist and this is his purge. Says Lake, \u201cIn his [Jesus\u2019] earthly ministry he was against the exclusion of outcasts, he was against judgment. I am attacking their [LDS] sacred right to marginalize, scapegoat.\u201d At one time he embraced the LDS church as a solution to his problems. But that solution was ineffective, and now he seems to be pointing the finger at those he sees as having caused so much pain to him and the men he loved.<\/p>\n

The question that remains is where does Randall Lake go from here? \u201cCan you imagine being a rock star and going around at 65 doing concerts of \u2018The Best Of\u2019 for songs you made famous during the Vietnam War?\u201d he says about simply repeating his old work. \u201cI didn\u2019t learn that by being wise, I learned it by doing the 95th teacup and having it be a piece of shit. You cannot go back. You can\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In his years of painting conservative paintings he says he has added nothing to the visual vocabulary except his subject matter. He says he is asking himself, \u201cWhat\u2019s Randall Lake about Randall Lake?\u201d But his enormous body of work that runs like a river concurrent with the life of the artist is still great and will always be great.<\/p>\n

For those who appreciate life, Randall Lake\u2019s art is living, it has vibrated and pulsed with humanness for generations. His new work will please few, but after\u00a062\u00a0years of self-repression, he\u2019s earned his artistic license. Working through these paintings, though, may just be the cathartic experience he needs to move forward. A couple of weeks after we spoke Randall was in Coalville, braving the snow to paint en plein air. For those who do know Randall Lake, they know his passion and his inexhaustible energy in all things he does. \u201cTo go on you have to constantly reinvent yourself. If you stay with this you putrefy.\u201d It cannot be guessed where this torrent will lead, but if he lives for one person now, lives by no rules other than his own, he has earned it. \u201cAll you have when the day is over is you, God, and your integrity,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t have any life of quality if you don\u2019t have integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he has for decades, Randall Lake maintains a studio on the top floor of the Guthrie Building. You can see more of his work at\u00a0www.randalllake.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How does an Orange County boy, a homosexual with a growing reputation as a painter in Paris, become one of Utah\u2019s most known and venerated painters? By obeying the rules. These days, that is exactly what\u00a0Randall Lake\u00a0is not doing. Lake grew up in affluent circumstances. In the \u201960s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[455],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-randall-lake"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 19:53:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70038,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/70038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}