Richard Speer is the world's foremost authority on the life and art of painter Matt Lamb. As Lamb's biographer, author of Matt Lamb: The Art of Success (John Wiley & Sons), and editor of the Matt Lamb Blog, Speer traveled the world for two years as the artist's shadow, uncovering the secrets to Lamb's phenomenal successes as a businessman and artist. Speer learned how Lamb parlayed a cash-poor, mom-and-pop funeral home into one of the largest family-owned funeral-home chains in the United States. He also coaxed Lamb to talk about the dramatic midlife illness that caused him to sell the funeral home business and his other holdings and become an artist.
In addition to charting his evolution as a painter and philosopher, Speer delved into the unusual spiritual beliefs that inform his paintings, and chronicled the controversies that dogged Lamb as the art world tried vainly to classify and commodify him. On his journey through Lamb's world, Speer enjoyed unprecedented access to the artist's personal and financial archives, family members, friends, business associates, critics, and most importantly, the artist himself.
Speer's dynamic talk and PowerPoint presentation, "Matt Lamb: The Art of Success," takes audiences along on Lamb's evolution from the business world's ultimate insider to the art world's ultimate outsider. Finally, Speer shows how each of us can learn from Lamb's dramatic life, highly effective business principles, and inspirational philosophy of personal and spiritual self-actualization.
Click here to inquire about Richard Speer's lectures on Matt Lamb.
Richard Speer also lectures on a number of other topics, including his years as an award-winning television journalist; his thoughts on the current state of television news; and his unique approach to art and cultural criticism. Another popular lecture is Speer's "How to Write an Effective Artist Statement," in which he helps artists write and speak more effectively about their work and thereby attract the attention of gallery owners and critics.
He often illustrates his art lectures with relevant paintings and other artworks, which he invites audience members to view up close and discuss.
He has lectured in academic, commercial, non-profit, and private venues.
Speer generally concludes his talks with a question-and-answer session in which he dialogues with audience members or seminar participants.
In his "How to Write an Effective Artist Statement" workshops, he works one-on-one with artists to help them fine-tune the way they present themselves to the art world.
An Associated Press Award-winning journalist and contributor to Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Sacramento News & Review, ARTnews, Art, Ltd., and Opera News, Speer is also Visual Arts Critic at Willamette Week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning alternative newsweekly in Portland, Oregon. He has written articles and catalogue essays about some of the world's preeminent artists and has lectured at forums including the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention (Washington, D.C.), Arie Crown Theater (Chicago, Illinois), The Objectivist Center Summer Seminar, Portland City Club (Portland, Oregon), Alberta Arts Foundation (Portland, Oregon), and Beaverton Arts Commission (Beaverton, Oregon). As a talk radio guest, he has appeared on nationally syndicated and local shows on stations such as KRLA Los Angeles, WJR Detroit, WUCF Orlando, KPAM Portland, and KBOO Portland.
Speer's fluency, ease, and humor as a public speaker were honed throughout an on-air career as anchor/reporter at NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX television affiliates throughout the United States. His experience in public speaking began even earlier, when he was a high school student in Europe. A star debater, orator, and short-film actor/director, he took first-place national honors in the Veterans of Foreign Wars "Voice of Democracy" competition. As winner of the competition, he was awarded a $16,000 scholarship, a meeting with the President of the United States, and the opportunity to deliver his winning speech at national and local convocations including a United States Congressional Banquet.
After graduating as Valedictorian of his high school class, he returned to the United States for college, majoring in journalism at the University of Central Florida's School of Communications and minoring in humanities. While in college, he created and hosted a public affairs television program called Student Standpoint, entered the broadcasting field as a radio news reporter, and moonlighted as an operatic tenor with a regional opera company. Upon graduating from U.C.F. magna cum laude, he began his television career as a news writer, editor, producer, reporter, and anchor.
Having grown up in Europe, immersed in history and the arts, Speer has naturally gravitated as a reporter to profiles of visual artists, architects, singers, composers, and thinkers. He has won accolades for his feature reports, investigative and spot-news stories, and lifestyle features, earning him six consecutive first-place awards from The Associated Press and "Best Lifestyle Feature" from The Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Chapter.
Today, having left behind the blow-dried world of T.V. news for the life of an author, art critic, and alternative-press writer, Speer has earned a reputation as a dynamic social critic: incisive, irreverent, and sometimes controversial. His viewpoint is an unlikely but challenging integration of epicureanism, libertarian thought, romanticism, modernism, rationality, Late 19th Century aestheticism, and 1960s hippie utopianism. These perspectives emerge in his writing and speaking engagements in ways that entertain and provoke.
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ABOUT RICHARD SPEER'S LECTURES ON MATT LAMB AND OTHER TOPICS
CRITICS, CURATORS, AND CORPORATE CAPTAINS WEIGH IN ON RICHARD SPEER
"A hedonist-critic in the tradition of Apollinaire and Cocteau, Richard Speer has a dramatic, Baroque bent to his prose... A former TV news reporter, he can and often does scoop The Oregonian. Beneath all the pageantry he is a sharp investigator who gets to know the artists he discusses. Overall, he treats art like the social sport it is and does the best artist profiles in town."
-Jeff Jahn, Critic, Modern Painters, NWDrizzle.com
"The stylish, bespectacled Speer has a romantic flair and uses language to color by his own numbers."
– TJ Norris, OregonLive.com
"Speer knows how to distill the essence of the story... He introduces us to a cast of compelling characters and often surprises us with unexpected twists."
-Associated Press
"Richard Speer has the innate ability to find the focus of a story and stick to it. As both a news professional and a news consumer, I am constantly impressed with his masterful use of the English language, his perfect instincts, his sense of pacing and tone..."
-Burnham Edson, Vice-President, The New York Times Company
"We have grown to know and love his intellectual clout and kick-ass style: the verve, color, and wit, the super-conscious observational detail and sardonic social commentary."
-Barry Mack, Artist
"His writing pulls you into the heart of a story... one of the finest reporters I've seen anywhere."
-Carlos Fernandez, Consultant, Frank N. Magid Associates
PRAISE FOR RICHARD SPEER'S MATT LAMB: THE ART OF SUCCESS
"A captivating biography..."
– Beverly Close, The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)
"Outrageously funny, vividly colorful..."
– Carol Gilbert, The Oregonian (County Cork, Ireland)
"Most biographies lope along; this one runs and jumps. Speer is fascinated by Lamb, as will be any reader. After all, how many art books open with a sentence anything like, "There are demons in the gallery"?
– Dan Hays, The Statesman Journal (Salem, Oregon)
"Richard Speer powerfully illuminates Lamb's art, life, and career... Speer takes the reader on a detailed journey through the artist's humble origins, personal struggles, and the birth and development of his intriguing artistic techniques..."
– Stephanie Snyder, Willamette Week (Portland, Oregon)
"An entertaining and educational read for the lay person as well as the scholar, Matt Lamb: The Art of Success is a well-conceived, cleverly written global view of Lamb’s personal and artistic life. With clarity and humor, Richard Speer engulfs the reader in Lamb's world... This is an apt retelling of a boisterous life, full of fascinating vignettes and Lamb’s unique blend of charm and irony."
– Enrique Mallen, Ph.D., Picasso scholar and professor, Texas A&M University
"Mr. Speer guides us with insight and humor through the amazing story of Matt Lamb, an artist who lives large while tip-toeing on the sidelines of death."
– George Wendt, Actor
"...Emphasizes that the American Dream is alive and well. A great story!"
– Robert L. Waltrip, Chairman/CEO, Service Corporation International
"Richard Speer brings insight and sensitivity to the envisioning, making, and business of art through the evolution of Matt Lamb. We follow Lamb's creative choices, his development of process, selection of materials, and so much more -- all with the artist's salty approach and focus on love as a primal force."
– Nancy Azara, Artist and Author of Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art
"Matt Lamb: The Art of Success showcases an extraordinary life built on hard work and raw talent. Richard Speer's biography of Lamb shows that being an artist, entrepreneur, visionary, and Teamster are not mutually exclusive. In this inspiring story, they are all parts of one man's remarkable life."
– James Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
"Lamb is an earthy blend of multiple strata: keen business acumen, spiritual curiosity, uninhibited artistry, and infectious enthusiasm. With so much texture and so many layers, the man, his work, and this book catch and hold our attention."
– Fabrice Braunrot, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Private Bank
"Matt Lamb represents that innocent child in each of us who is alive with creativity and energy. Like his paintings, this book is created in layers and allows us to go into each period of Lamb's life so we may better understand him and the spirits coming out of his canvases."
– David Sabin, Founder and Chairman, Salton USA
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