Biography of ANDREW LAKEY

Andrew Lakey’s life story so far–the extraordinary one he was born into, and the phenomenal one he’s forged on his own as an ultimate survivor and internationally renowned artist–possesses all the right plot points for an authentically sweeping epic. Though some biographical markers might seem of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction variety, Lakey’s story is, in fact, one that has profoundly touched countless other human lives on many levels.

Today, Andrew Lakey is meeting new challenges in his professional endeavors and personal evolution alike. Emerging from a health-related hiatus from work that came on the heels of a decade of painterly output extremely prodigious by any standards, Lakey is now exploring different media through which to channel and express his creative energies. And, in addition to renewing the creative process because it is, quite simply, essential to his being to do so, Lakey is increasingly driven by the desire for his work to be a force in environmental and humanitarian outreach projects.

From the monumental–he envisions large works for public spaces–to the intimate–his jewelry line–and from 360 degrees–sculpture is a growing interest–to flat panel–film is a new avenue of pursuit--Lakey’s vision will manifest itself in many forms. While the remarkable first phase of his career was guided by a single narrative thrust, Lakey himself says that, at this turning point, his future body of work is a still unfolding mystery, something that intrigues him to no end. What’s sure to remain a given is that it will be colored by the striking contrast of sensory revelation and experiential, almost scientific inquisitiveness that resonates throughout his work. And, that it will be informed by the passionate self-expression that has been core to Lakey’s art since day one.

A purely self-taught practitioner in the Outsider Art tradition, Andrew Lakey was first discovered in 1990. His remarkable rise to success was triggered by a string of events set into motion following a cathartic experience--on New Year’s Eve, 1986--during which Lakey believes he witnessed "a direct glimpse of the spiritual world," as he was embraced and ushered into another dimension by beings that he knew to be his angels. A cocaine user at the time, Lakey leaves open the possibility that it might have been a drug-induced hallucination, but the impact of it was so profound, he feels as sure as he can be that it was something more. He became compelled to find a way to communicate the peace and harmony he’d felt during his cosmic trip--and to more deeply understand it himself.

A life-long doodler, Lakey began to draw compulsively. "It became my therapy," he remembers, and over time, his intuitive line art came to capture the essence of the experience, and to visualize his encounter with what he’s called "the secrets of the universe." Three years later, Lakey abruptly quit his job, inspired by an overwhelming urge to paint. Shortly after, on January 3, 1990, Andrew was again visited by messengers, this time three men, who affirmed his artistic aspirations, and gave him a mission–to paint 2000 angel paintings by the year 2000.

Without any preconceived notion of how these paintings would--or should--look, Lakey tapped into his emotions to develop a bold and luminous style that has continued to mature over time. Powered then, as now, by his native talent for color, masterful command of line, and innate sense of chiaroscuro, Lakey fused a post-modern sensibility with disparate elements of ancient and classical iconography, inventing a distinctive brand of expressionism. At once serene and dynamic, space age and primordial, it was both in tune with the cultural zeitgeist of the day, and timeless in its impact.

Things began to fall in to place in an uncanny way. The fledgling painter, experimenting with acrylic medium, asked the manager of the San Diego bank where he did business if he could hang some work there. The day his paintings went up, a major Canadian art collector visited the branch, studied the images at length, and contacted Pierrette Van Cleve, a respected art dealer he knew, to see if she was familiar with Lakey. Van Cleve was startled when, after tracking the artist down, he told her with complete candor that he’d only been painting for eight weeks. Upon seeing his tactile canvases, thick with raised lines and textures, she was convinced of his seriousness, and also reminded of a commitment she’d once made about finding ways to bring art to the vision-impaired. She enlisted Lakey to work with her on doing just that (although he didn’t know until years later that their work creating art accessible to the blind was fulfilling Van Cleve’s long-standing promise to a young boy).

A week later, Van Cleve mentioned Lakey to the ABC affiliate in San Diego. Intrigued, they sent a crew to his studio–which at the time was in the artist’s one-car garage–then arranged a private showing for the visually impaired, and covered it all for the news. Peter Jennings happened to be in San Diego, and saw the footage, after which Lakey sent over a painting as a gift to Jennings so he could "read" the surface relief with his hands. The ABC anchor subsequently donated it to NYC’s acclaimed center for the visually impaired, The Lighthouse. A prominent LaJolla gallery owner caught the whole story on TV, and mounted Lakey’s first solo exhibition in August, 1990.

As Paul Robert Walker writes in Andrew Lakey: Art, Angels, and Miracles (Turner Publishing/Atlanta, 1996), "It was now just ten months since Andrew Lakey decided to become a painter…in that short time, he had discovered a new…technique that allowed him to… communicate to both the sighted and the blind. He had appeared on television across the country…and he had sold every piece of art offered at his first professional showing."

Lakey executed a minimum of 500 canvases a year over the next decade, creating over 10,000 works in all, as well as hitting the 2000 angel painting milestone right on time, by New Year’s Eve, 1999. Along the way, in addition to hundreds of paintings going to charities, his original works ended up in museums and private collections around the world. Among those who own original Lakeys are entertainment world icons, leading clergy, royalty, high end art collectors, and three United States presidents.

The art also took on a life of its own, becoming a cultural phenomenon to multitudes that responded to Lakey’s vibrant imagery and the palpable spiritual resonance behind it. Many of these people had come through life-changing catharses of their own, and some believed the work had healing powers. Others saw Andrew as a sort of guru, something he has steadfastly resisted. For Lakey, his work has always been about the transforming power of the spiritual journey that had allowed him to access the universal energies and hidden potential inside himself. The paintings, energy fields in and of themselves, are manifestations of Lakey’s commitment to remain true to that always.

But if art can be considered the transference of its maker’s soulful essence into a tangible form that can be shared with the world, Andrew Lakey’s uplifting work is destined to elicit powerful responses. While he won’t deny it evolved out of a mysterious confluence of human and divine forces, Lakey maintains that his own faith and relationship with God are deeply private. He even deflected the attempts of the media world’s top interviewers to share his beliefs. Genuinely appreciative of his ability to touch people, and respectful of others’ feelings as only someone who has surmounted personal adversity can be, Lakey nevertheless says, "I’m not a spiritual leader, I’m a regular guy. I’m an artist. But once art becomes public, it’s subject to interpretation, and people invest it with their own beliefs and expectations." He adds, "The best part of that phenomenon, though, is that art is wonderfully therapeutic, and I want to harness that energy towards humanitarian efforts."

That thought has predominated since 2000, during Lakey’s extended break from active work enforced by serious health issues. While he stresses "it is my heart and passion to be back in the studio making art," Lakey must now wear a haz-mat suit in order to paint. After years of creating intensely media-heavy, and literally topographical pieces–sometimes using a gallon of paint on a four-foot square canvas–he’s developed severe allergies and chemical sensitivities. In essence, the studio has become a physically toxic environment, and Lakey has already undergone four surgeries to repair the damage to his sinus cavities. His doctor, who he calls "the Tiger Woods of sinus surgery," says that of the close to 10,000 patients he’s seen, Lakey is the third most sensitive ever. Recently, Lakey started a regimen of Xolar injections, a pioneering new drug designed to interrupt the allergic process. He’s hoping that the treatment, along with further surgery, will allow him to live a better, fuller life, and to paint less restrictively--though his former pace of as many as 500 paintings a year will likely never be matched.

Therefore, the necessity to pursue other media through which to satiate Lakey’s voracious need to create. And, to fuel these new modes of expression, Lakey is tapping fresh sources for imagery, and is already passionately exploring the styles and symbols of diverse world cultures, including Indonesia, Egypt, and India, and is working with both prehistoric iconography and space travel metaphors. Most importantly, Lakey says, "I want to create simply for the sake of it, because it makes me happy. I’m at my best creating lines, moving and intersecting them, and I want to do that for the rest of my life."

There is one other major passion propelling Andrew Lakey now, one that will certainly effect another life transformation, and that will no doubt meaningfully surface in his art. The indefatigable creator of lines is on a journey of discovery to unearth the lines that created him. The son of an American serviceman and French woman, Lakey is actively tracing his European roots, and hopes to meet contemporary relatives who are as yet unknown to him. Lakey has few specifics, but what is known couldn’t be more dramatic. His maternal grandfather – Rufino Indarte – deserted his post as a commander in Franco’s army at the onset of the Spanish Civil War, and could never return home again. He and Andrew ’s grandmother Dolores--now near 90 and residing in Northern California–escaped fascism in 1937 on the back of a donkey, crossing the Pyrenees into France during a bitter winter.

Bound for Paris, they stopped in the Loire Valley-adjacent town of Chateauroux, as Dolores went into labor. Their premature first-born daughter lived only a month, but they stayed on, and eventually bore three more daughters in Chateauroux. They faced the horrors of another war, enduring the German occupation of France, during part of which Rufino was interned in a concentration camp. Andrew ’s mother Mercedes was born in the early ‘40s, and, still in her teens, married Mike Markivich, an American of Polish descent stationed at the nearby U.S. Air Force base. Andrew arrived in 1959, his sister Linda the next year, and soon after they moved to Merced AFB in Northern California. The marriage was unhappy, however, and Mercedes returned to Chateauroux, where she soon wed another U.S. airman, David Lakey, who raised her children as his own. They were back living in the States again by the time Andrew was three. Just over a decade later, having survived two wars but perhaps not the emotional toll they’d taken, patriarch Rufino committed suicide.

Andrew hasn’t been back to Europe since early childhood, and personal memories of his French country home are fleeting and few. Now, happily married with two daughters of his own, and on the cusp of a new phase in his creative life, Lakey is as determined to search out his family origins and living relations in Spain and France as he is to crossing new frontiers with his art. Quite remarkably, in January 2004, just as Lakey had seriously embarked on this personal quest–and on the very same day he was taping a television interview on the subject–he received a package from France, sent by a woman named Valerie. She had been doing some genealogical sleuthing of her own, and discovered that Mike Markivich was her father, and Andrew her half-brother. And, in an astonishing coincidence, Valerie–a noted choreographer–was born three years after Andrew , on the exact same birthday.

Deeply moved and motivated by the knowledge of his newly found sister–who he plans to meet soon–Lakey is redoubling his efforts towards reconnecting with his French roots, and finding, at long last, his lost family of Spain. Though much may have been lost to the passage of time and the flow of history, there is a broken line that can no doubt be made whole again through the inspired energy of Andrew Lakey.