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.