page_title: Byron Randall
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Byron Randall / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: oil painting by Byron Randall
context_page_description: Byron Randall was an American West Coast artist, well known for his expressionist paintings and printmaking. A contemporary of artists Pablo O'Higgins, Anton Refregier, Robert P. McChesney, Emmy Lou Packard, and Pele de Lappe, Randall shared their left wing politics while exploring different techniques and styles, including a vivid use of color and line.
context_section_description: Born in Tacoma, Washington, Byron Theodore Randall was raised in Salem, Oregon, where he worked as a waiter, harvest hand, boxer, and cook for the Marion County jail to finance his art career. Randall trained and subsequently taught at the Salem Art Center, product of the New Deal's Federal Art Project.  When he was 20 years old, a solo show at the Whyte Gallery in Washington D.C. brought his work to the attention of Newsweek and launched his professional career. That exhibit was followed by others, over the years, in places that include Baltimore, Salem Oregon, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Indianapolis, Toronto, Montreal, Moscow, Edinburgh, Leeds, and Inverness (Scotland). Since his death Randall's work has had one-man shows at the Fresno Art Museum, Etc Gallery (Salem), Tobya Gallery (Seattle), Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre, and Tomales History Center, and has been included in group shows at the Hearst Art Gallery, Meridian Gallery, Laband Gallery, and Vermillion Gallery among others.
  Randall had three wives. His first wife was Helen Nelson, a Canadian sculptor, whom he met at the Salem Art Center while attending her classes in sculpture. She sharpened his commitment to social and trade union activism, and her belief in his talent provided vital support for the fledgling artist. In 1940 they married and moved to Mexico for six months, where they had a child, Gale, and where Randall continued to develop as a painter, inspired by the vibrant landscape and people. During the Second World War years, while Randall served in the Merchant Marines, he continued to paint whenever possible. His experiences in the South Pacific influenced his preference for natural forms and bright colors.
  After the war, Randall traveled to Eastern Europe, as arts correspondent for a Canadian news agency, where he witnessed and painted the post-war devastation of Yugoslavia and Poland. Randall and Helen settled in the North Beach area of San Francisco where they had a second child, Jonathan, in 1948. Five years later they left the United States for Canada, to escape McCarthyite anti-Communism; they had both been in the US Communist Party. In 1956 Helen died in a traffic accident. Randall and his children returned to San Francisco where he married the print-maker and muralist Emmy Lou Packard. Between 1959 and 1968 Randall and Packard ran a Guest House and Art Gallery in Mendocino, California. They were political and environmental activists, involved in the campaign to protect the area from commercial despoliation and in the creation of the Peace and Freedom Party.
  After the end of their marriage in 1972, Randall established a guesthouse/art gallery in Tomales, California. He converted a dilapidated chicken coop to become his home and studio. This conversion brought him national attention. So did his huge collection of potato mashers. In 1982 he married Eve Wieland, an Austrian wartime emigre. She was his wife until her death from cancer four years later. For the last nine years of his life, Randall's partner was Pele deLappe, an artist and friend of some 50 years standing. Randall died in San Francisco on August 11, 1999 at the age of 80 after a battle with emphysema.
caption: Self Portrait, 1984-89
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