In the absence of more complete biographical information about Lake following this period, one must rely on such scanty information as exists in the history books. As is common knowledge, Bender’s death was followed by a period of civil strife between the Reds and the Greens, culminating in a siege of the Voss Bender Memorial Post Office, which the Reds took by force only to be bloodily expelled by the Greens a short time later.

Could this, then, as some critics believe, be the message of “Invitation”? The screaming face of the man, the knife blade through the palm, which is wielded by Death, who has just claimed Voss Bender’s life? Perhaps. But I believe in a more personal interpretation. Given what I know about Lake’s relationship with his father, this personal meaning is all too clear. For in these three paintings, beginning with “Invitation,” we see the repudiation of Lake by his natural father (the insect catcher) and Lake’s embrace of Bender as his real, artistic father.

What, then, does “Invitation” tell us? It shows Lake’s father metaphorically leaving his son. It shows his son, distraught, with a letter sent by his father—a letter which contains written confirmation of that repudiation. The “beheading” in “Invitation to a Beheading” is the dethroning of the king—his father … and yet, when a king is beheaded, a new king always takes his place.

Within days of this spiritual rejection, Voss Bender dies and for Lake the two events—the rejection by his father, the death of a great artist—are forever linked, and the only recourse open to him is worship of the dead artist, a path made possible through his upbringing by a mystical, religious mother. Thus, “Through His Eyes” is about the death and life of Bender, and the metaphorical death of his real father. “Aria…” gives Bender a resurrected face, a resurrected life, as the force, the light, behind the success of the haggard rider, who is grief-stricken because he has buried his real father in the frozen graveyard—has allowed his natural father to be eclipsed by the myth, the potency, of his new father, the moon, the reflection of himself: Bender.

In the end, these paintings are about Lake’s yearning for a father he never had. Bender makes a safe father because, being dead, he can never repudiate the son who has adopted him. If the paintings discussed become increasingly more inaccessible, it is because their meaning becomes ever more personal.—From Janice Shriek’s A Short Overview of the Art of Martin Lake and His Invitation to a Beheading, for The Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, 5th edition.