The Myth of Matt Lamb
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The book is a velvet massage, but Speer has managed to make it a brisk read. That’s no mean trick when the subject is a devout family man with nothing more to own up to than a drinking problem he’s already licked by the time he becomes an artist at age 52. Speer turns up the heat on descriptions of everything from the art (“These are the flowers Stephen Hawking would draw if he could”) to his own job (“To figure Lamb out will be an epic challenge, because his has been an epic life”) and makes the most of Lamb’s potty-mouthed, melodramatic persona.
But in the 80s he also had a scare. Told by his doctor that a combination of hepatitis, mononucleosis, and sarcoidosis of the liver was likely to do him in–and before a second opinion pronounced him perfectly OK–he vowed to change his life. After years of dealing with death, Lamb saw the importance of making good on unfulfilled wishes, and he had one of his own: he wanted to be an artist, and no mere Sunday painter but a recognized major player whose work would carry the world a message of love. Leaving the funeral business behind (it was sold, but family members are still involved) and working without instruction, he developed a technique for treating canvas with concrete and gesso, creating textured surfaces and finding “spirits” in them that he delineated in vivid, heavily applied color.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
