Byron Randall (In his own words)

It may well be that a painter’s best thinking is done with his brush. But it can’t do much lasting harm for him to venture a thought with his head once in a while, either.  It isn’t necessary to probe the very well-spring of creation, of course.  That sacred water is easily muddied.  Perhaps it is enough for a painter just to pull up long enough to make some sort of rough appraisal of where his art has come from, once in a while.  This might give a clue about where his art leads to …

My art came as I did from Salem, Oregon.  The look of them might have been different if I’d grown up anywhere but in Oregon. Brilliant spring sunlight nursing the green valleys after a long rainy winter… there’s a powerful bit of environment that would show in a man’s work all his life.

Or the atmosphere round the bonfire in a hopyard after supper. Someone usually brought out a banjo or sang a song and a man would learn something about the need people have to say something to each other more than just ordinary talk.

Growing up in Salem, then, had a good deal to do with the sort of painting I have done and the sort of thing I have chosen to paint in all the years since.  I’ve seen that creative communication has a vitality all its own.  It’s not a refuge from life, but an intensification.  It’s the practice of Humanity.  In painting I think the approach that best affirms life is Expressionism, and that’s why I am an Expressionist.

The historian and philosopher Bernard Berenson said that the ultimate justification for any work of art lies in its ability to assist the spectator in making a work of art of himself.

A working artist would never think of it (in those terms…) About the best such a hapless fellow can hope to do is fend off extraneous pressures - (questions of the marketplace and such) - with one hand while keeping true aim on what seems a worthy target with the other.

Byron Randall, 1961 and 1967