The Art of Possibility
Mary Russell’s elegant paintings exemplify her unique insight
by Amy Lanning
Mary Russell’s elegant paintings exemplify her unique insight
by Amy Lanning
When painter Mary Russell strolls along the produce aisle of her neighborhood supermarket, she isn’t necessarily thinking about what to cook for dinner. Instead, she may be contemplating how light filters through the transparent skin of a red onion or how the blush of ripeness on a green pear creates a striking color contrast. However, whether or not Russell decides to render these objects doesn’t depend solely on their individual appeal; it also depends on how well they can be combined into a still life scene. “People often tell me that what I’ve created is more beautiful than the set-up, but I’ll always be enamored by the things I’m striving to depict,” she says. “What challenges me is how each object’s inherent beauty adds to the entire arrangement.”
Having established herself in the early years of her career as a dual medium painter using either oils or pastels, she focused initially on painting portraits and figures in both interior and exterior settings. “I moved to still life because I wanted to improve in painting groups of people,” she explains. “If I could understand how the still life worked I could understand spatial relationships and move on, but everyday I continue to learn and to see more in the objects I paint. I become entranced by how a pot’s glaze contains everything around it - the air, reflections of other objects, its own density next to a lack of density in the adjacent space. It’s the comparison between transparency and density of air in shadows and air in light which captivates me.” This intellectual approach coupled with ardor for the beauty of light on a surface is clearly manifested in Russell’s creation of stylish paintings that exhibit depth, harmony, and grace. Her viewers can at once admire their well-chosen detail and polished design.
Always sketching as a child, Russell recalls the Famous Artists School’s “Draw Me!” competition she entered as a gradeschooler in Texas. “There was this man in a suit who showed up at the house one afternoon and asked my parents if I could take the correspondence course,” she says. “The answer was ‘no’ because they were concerned about my schoolwork; however, as a substitute, I was allowed to take an art class in town.” By the time she reached high school, she was practicing fashion illustration in her free time. “I was attracted to the spare line,” she says, “but being so young I also wanted to try other things.” Her college years, which followed in Oklahoma, didn’t provide much inspiration, however. “Abstract expressionism was all that was being taught at the time so I settled on basic anatomy, along with a handful of other courses I wasn’t really interested in,” she laments. It wasn’t until the approach of her thirties that she realized she wanted to learn to paint. Committed not to lose any more time, Russell says, “I took a lot of classes in Taos and elsewhere and then went back home to work.” She painted diligently, procuring her first gallery in Colorado Springs within two years.
Now, in her studio, Russell paints from one to three paintings a month. She rises early and works roughly five hours per day, depending on the weather. Though she employs an environmental light on her set-up, which creates the same effect as a skylight, she relies on the natural light entering from a bank of north windows beside her easel to illuminate her painting surface and palette. “If the clouds are high and reflective, I can see beautifully,” she says, “but if they’re low and brooding, I take a day off.”
In composing her subject matter, Russell concentrates on weight and movement rather than geometry. She starts with one object that strikes her fancy -- perhaps a clay pot. Then she adds items that will provide a balance between opposing factors, such as dark and light, creating movement and allure via value and temperature change to form a cohesive whole. “Oftentimes,” she points out, “the item you started with is what you end up removing because it’s not working. Ultimately, the job of the painter is to move the viewer’s eye around a surface. This is why the composition is most important. It is the blueprint for the painting.”
Russell equates the arrangement of materials in her paintings to the scene in a landscape or a cityscape. “Still life contains all the same elements, only the spatial distances are different,” she says. Yet what particularly piques her interest in the still life, whether referring to the traditional styles of Flemish and Chiaroscuro painting or to the more contemporary and whimsical variations, is the genre’s unique design potential. “I am not at the mercy of a pre-existing natural or architectural structure,” she muses. “I enjoy composing combinations of objects into shapes of my own making.”
Russell believes still life is underrated. “Many people are forever stuck in envisioning it as dead stuff,” she admits with a laugh, “but it doesn’t have to look old world. An unanticipated ingredient can be incorporated. Everyone relates to landscapes because they imagine looking out a window, but ultimately the still life is more personal. It’s closer to you. The mind can enter into the image and traverse all the little corners and cubbyholes. I’m interested in exploring those subtle areas where the values are closer together. They are sometimes the most surprising and alive.” She credits David Leffel, an artist with whom she has studied, for producing work that exemplifies the virtue of the genre. “Viewers have begun to appreciate the still life again because of David. He has brought them to the forefront and has made sure that we understand their beauty, color, and light.”
Inspired by both innovative ideas and tried concepts that work, Mary Russell combines traditional painting techniques with well-devised images. For her palette she stays with the old school and mixes her own colors. “I start with one basic scheme and continue with it,” she says. “This creates color harmony.” She explains that because she paints with natural light the sky filters into everything; she therefore works with warm shadows and cool lights. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t do the opposite,” she adds. As for her images, fans of Russell can oftentimes expect the unexpected. In one painting, a glass marble positioned strategically next to a lounging wooden mannequin holding a cocktail umbrella resembles a beach ball beside a sunbather. In another, the foreground arrangement of a plate of fruit, a wine glass, and a napkin imply an evening French souper while the background displays a John Singer Sargent print of a similar meal in progress, giving the impression of bringing the past into the present.
Her personal objective to enjoy the process and to bring that enjoyment to her audience is the same goal with which she started her career. “I just want to have the opportunity to continue challenging myself,” she says. “In the beginning your lessons are big, then as you progress you take baby steps until you find yourself crawling. It’s an analogy of life where the work actually becomes more difficult, yet you become better equipped to handle it. Now, I let the work lead; it has dominion over me and I trust it. It’s a kind of surrender.” This faith in the artists’ process translates into Russell’s aspiration for her viewers. “A painting must become more than the sum of its parts,” she says. “I hope that my work will provide a moment of respite -- that people will perceive and experience what I saw, what took me out of the mundane. I’m referring to the possibility of a different insight. New ideas are the stuff that has propelled people through the ages and will continue to do so. In any form of expression these possibilities are as viable, or more, than the end result.” ###
Having established herself in the early years of her career as a dual medium painter using either oils or pastels, she focused initially on painting portraits and figures in both interior and exterior settings. “I moved to still life because I wanted to improve in painting groups of people,” she explains. “If I could understand how the still life worked I could understand spatial relationships and move on, but everyday I continue to learn and to see more in the objects I paint. I become entranced by how a pot’s glaze contains everything around it - the air, reflections of other objects, its own density next to a lack of density in the adjacent space. It’s the comparison between transparency and density of air in shadows and air in light which captivates me.” This intellectual approach coupled with ardor for the beauty of light on a surface is clearly manifested in Russell’s creation of stylish paintings that exhibit depth, harmony, and grace. Her viewers can at once admire their well-chosen detail and polished design.
Always sketching as a child, Russell recalls the Famous Artists School’s “Draw Me!” competition she entered as a gradeschooler in Texas. “There was this man in a suit who showed up at the house one afternoon and asked my parents if I could take the correspondence course,” she says. “The answer was ‘no’ because they were concerned about my schoolwork; however, as a substitute, I was allowed to take an art class in town.” By the time she reached high school, she was practicing fashion illustration in her free time. “I was attracted to the spare line,” she says, “but being so young I also wanted to try other things.” Her college years, which followed in Oklahoma, didn’t provide much inspiration, however. “Abstract expressionism was all that was being taught at the time so I settled on basic anatomy, along with a handful of other courses I wasn’t really interested in,” she laments. It wasn’t until the approach of her thirties that she realized she wanted to learn to paint. Committed not to lose any more time, Russell says, “I took a lot of classes in Taos and elsewhere and then went back home to work.” She painted diligently, procuring her first gallery in Colorado Springs within two years.
Now, in her studio, Russell paints from one to three paintings a month. She rises early and works roughly five hours per day, depending on the weather. Though she employs an environmental light on her set-up, which creates the same effect as a skylight, she relies on the natural light entering from a bank of north windows beside her easel to illuminate her painting surface and palette. “If the clouds are high and reflective, I can see beautifully,” she says, “but if they’re low and brooding, I take a day off.”
In composing her subject matter, Russell concentrates on weight and movement rather than geometry. She starts with one object that strikes her fancy -- perhaps a clay pot. Then she adds items that will provide a balance between opposing factors, such as dark and light, creating movement and allure via value and temperature change to form a cohesive whole. “Oftentimes,” she points out, “the item you started with is what you end up removing because it’s not working. Ultimately, the job of the painter is to move the viewer’s eye around a surface. This is why the composition is most important. It is the blueprint for the painting.”
Russell equates the arrangement of materials in her paintings to the scene in a landscape or a cityscape. “Still life contains all the same elements, only the spatial distances are different,” she says. Yet what particularly piques her interest in the still life, whether referring to the traditional styles of Flemish and Chiaroscuro painting or to the more contemporary and whimsical variations, is the genre’s unique design potential. “I am not at the mercy of a pre-existing natural or architectural structure,” she muses. “I enjoy composing combinations of objects into shapes of my own making.”
Russell believes still life is underrated. “Many people are forever stuck in envisioning it as dead stuff,” she admits with a laugh, “but it doesn’t have to look old world. An unanticipated ingredient can be incorporated. Everyone relates to landscapes because they imagine looking out a window, but ultimately the still life is more personal. It’s closer to you. The mind can enter into the image and traverse all the little corners and cubbyholes. I’m interested in exploring those subtle areas where the values are closer together. They are sometimes the most surprising and alive.” She credits David Leffel, an artist with whom she has studied, for producing work that exemplifies the virtue of the genre. “Viewers have begun to appreciate the still life again because of David. He has brought them to the forefront and has made sure that we understand their beauty, color, and light.”
Inspired by both innovative ideas and tried concepts that work, Mary Russell combines traditional painting techniques with well-devised images. For her palette she stays with the old school and mixes her own colors. “I start with one basic scheme and continue with it,” she says. “This creates color harmony.” She explains that because she paints with natural light the sky filters into everything; she therefore works with warm shadows and cool lights. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t do the opposite,” she adds. As for her images, fans of Russell can oftentimes expect the unexpected. In one painting, a glass marble positioned strategically next to a lounging wooden mannequin holding a cocktail umbrella resembles a beach ball beside a sunbather. In another, the foreground arrangement of a plate of fruit, a wine glass, and a napkin imply an evening French souper while the background displays a John Singer Sargent print of a similar meal in progress, giving the impression of bringing the past into the present.
Her personal objective to enjoy the process and to bring that enjoyment to her audience is the same goal with which she started her career. “I just want to have the opportunity to continue challenging myself,” she says. “In the beginning your lessons are big, then as you progress you take baby steps until you find yourself crawling. It’s an analogy of life where the work actually becomes more difficult, yet you become better equipped to handle it. Now, I let the work lead; it has dominion over me and I trust it. It’s a kind of surrender.” This faith in the artists’ process translates into Russell’s aspiration for her viewers. “A painting must become more than the sum of its parts,” she says. “I hope that my work will provide a moment of respite -- that people will perceive and experience what I saw, what took me out of the mundane. I’m referring to the possibility of a different insight. New ideas are the stuff that has propelled people through the ages and will continue to do so. In any form of expression these possibilities are as viable, or more, than the end result.” ###
