Born at the end of 1961 to his scientist father and social worker mother, in Cincinnati OH, Randall was granted both an inherent sense of order that comes with the disciple of scientific thinking, and the social-emotional messiness inherent in human relations. As a young boy of 7 or 8 he was encouraged in art making by his mother as she would take him to weekly art lessons at the local art museum. It was at this early age that he found the joys of self-expression and learned how art is able to calm and contain opposing internal forces. These early experiences paved the way toward his eventually finding the profession of art therapy. He obtained an BS degree in art therapy from Bowling Green State University in 1988, and then a MA degree in art therapy from George Washington University in 1994.

Randall spent much of his time painting in oils as a young adult. This eventually gave way to collage and mixed media, which are his preferred materials at this time. While Randall has spent some time drawing and painting from life, he has always gravitated toward abstraction. There is a greater sense of the universal in abstraction, than in representational work. Abstraction allows the artist to work more directly with internal forces and energies. The themes of order and chaos, flat surface and depth, light and dark, the dynamic tensions of curve and line, juxtaposing colors and tones, all speak to internal states and energies that all humans have in common. As Mondrian stated, “subjectivity ceases to exist only when the mutation-like leap is made from the individual existence to the universal existence.” For Randall, abstraction is the vehicle to help us make that leap.