Forget about happy little trees: Ben Lamb translates his anxieties to ‘Axe of God’

On a visit to Cleveland, some artist friends introduced Ben Lamb to the British TV series “Landscape Artist of the Year,” a reality competition in which artists were given four hours to paint a landscape, with the winner then determined by a panel of judges.

“And it was done in this very British style, so imagine that everyone’s friendly and everyone’s supportive,” Lamb said in early November from his home in North Linden. “And it was inspiring, because I got to watch a bunch of paintings being made. … And so, I started doing landscapes.”

A couple of years back, Lamb spoke with Matter News about his experiences displaying at arts festivals across the state and country, and how he at times struggled to find a market for the more liberally minded, politically charged art he was making at the time – particularly when these events brought him outside of the major cities. “And, you know, it’s just a different kind of mentality, because in a gallery, you’re all about, ‘Look at me. Look at my unique perspective,’” he said in 2024. “But when you set up in Grove City, or in Obetz, or in Delaware, it’s great to have that concept, and it’s great to be a big, wild, crazy, individual artist. But then you paid $400 to sit there, and it starts to be like, ‘I’d really like to sell something to these people.’” 

This paled into comparison to Lamb’s experience at an arts festival in suburban Cleveland this past summer, when one attendee felt the need to drag Willoughby police to the artist’s booth when confronted with anti-Trump works that offended his conservative sensibilities. “And the cop’s like, ‘Well, I guess it’s okay for you to have these things,’” Lamb said. “And I was like, ‘What? What do you? What’s the crime?’”

Owing to these collective events, Lamb has in recent years tried to home in on concepts that can both satisfy his own curiosities while also having a large enough market to support his existence as a freelance artist absent police involvement. First, he created a series based on eye-catching road signs, including the iconic former Tee Jaye’s placard in Clintonville. And more recently, he has launched a series of small acrylic landscape paintings that will feature in his new exhibition, “Axe of God,” opening at St. James Tavern at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5, with music from October Ember and Mama Velvet.

“I just thought, could there be anything more relatable than the sky, the earth, the trees, clouds?” Lamb said. “You know, things we can all see.”

Of course, in classic Lamb fashion, he couldn’t leave his landscapes unscathed, immediately pivoting to paint massive tornados ripping through these once-serene vistas – a result, he said, of the unshakeable anxiety he feels in navigating this social and political moment.

“So, this is me trying to do landscapes, but it’s also a subconscious nod to our times,” he said. “I mean, Obama’s whole slogan was ‘hope.’ And I tell you, even the right-wing guys, they don’t talk about freedom anymore, and no one talks about hope. I just feel bad for those kids who were born in 2016, and now they’re 10-years-old and they’ve become aware of Trump and his level of discourse. … And it’s like, ‘We can’t let our kid listen to this speech, because he’s going to say something horrible.’ And not even just ideologically horrible, although that’s guaranteed, but something as rude and crass as some idiot off the street. And I remember a time when people would aspire to that, like, ‘You could grow up and be president someday.’ And now it’s like, ‘Why? Are you a psychopath? Why would you want to do that?’”

A recurring theme emerges in conversation with Lamb, who at several points recalled the advice given to him by the various artists he has exhibited alongside at festivals, and then his complete inability to follow it. At one show, a fellow exhibitor told him that he needed to create larger scale works for those attendees who are willing to splurge, and he responded by crafting a series of small, 6”x 6” paintings. And on multiple occasions, artists have urged him to create pieces that cater to those well-off types who want something beautiful or funny for their homes that doesn’t require them to consider the difficult circumstances others in society are forced to muddle through. 

“And I just can’t do it. I don’t know what they want,” Lamb said. “So, I was just like, ‘Okay, I’m making tiny pieces that are inexpensive, that everyone can relate to, and that express the same terror that I feel.’ I mean, I can’t relate to what it feels like to not have economic concerns, or to feel like the politics of this moment don’t affect me. Or, you know, A.I, that sounds like a great investment!”

The massive scale of the tornados featured in “Axe of God” is highlighted by barely visible details that Lamb included in a number of the paintings using a fine-bristled brush and working under a magnified light set over his drafting table. Zoom in on the base of one twister and you can see a man in a jacket standing beside his car, while another features a miniscule auto fleeing the scene, each headlight bulb represented by a single glowing speck of paint.

While Lamb said he has never laid eyes on a twister, he said the series took on greater profundity following an August storm that sent funnel clouds ripping through Columbus, even flipping a car on the highway not far from the artist’s home. 

“I saw this tree over here get blown over, and then a lightning hit sparked right above my van, and it started sinking in, this is a significant weather event,” said Lamb, who joked that insurance companies only turn to religion when it comes to protecting their bottom lines – a reality that inspired the title of his new show. “Leave it to insurance companies to come up with the term ‘acts of God’ to refer to a bad thing that is out of their hands. There’s no religion anywhere in an insurance company until it comes time to pay out a claim.”