Buckinghamshire-born, Russell gained a BA in Fine Art (1st class) at Norwich School of Art in 1982 and an MA at Chelsea School of Art London in 1983.He has lived, worked and taught in Cornwall and Spain for over 20 years. He is a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and has taught at Falmouth and Penzance Schools of Art and co-founded, with the late Colin Scott the Victoria Studios.
In the 1990s he went walkabout in the Alpujarran mountains of southern Spain and liked what he saw so much that he stayed for 5 years.During that time he was the first painter to be invited to have an exhibition at the Centro Cerrado Garrido, in the famous Donana National Park Andalucia, one of the most important areas of protected environment in the world.
He is an artist firmly anchored in the sea of abstraction; he has always been intrigued by and continues to pursue "the elusive but all-important qualities of scale, proportion and pace - the size of idea in relation to the size of canvas - and especially slow-burning images and not the 'wow' factor."
A committed abstract artist for whom drawing remains of prime importance, he says: "My drawing is a sort of neural static or vibration, a process of adjustment and modification, my finished paintings perhaps are diagrams of that process, or even a kind of metaphysical circuitry - who knows?"
"The effort of art that I've tried to sustain over the years involves the notion that all of my work exists and functions as one entity. I attempt to bring to mind all the various aspects of this totality when working, with each individual piece contributing to the whole."
Whether inspired by the swallows of Spain and their near-collision with the solid stone of an Andalucian mountain village house in his series Headroom (With Swallows), or what he calls the "Cornish coastal experience", from canvases filled with the arrowed shapes of soaring swallows, to those filled with the rise and fall of the tide which seems about to flood his Sea Rooms, it is the sense of wholeness which provides such deep satisfaction.
A Selection of Exhibitions
1982 Mixed show: Royal Academy London
1984 Mixed show: London Group Whitechapel London
1990 12 Contemporary Painters. Royal Cornwall Museum Gallery Truro Cornwall
1991 Two-man show. New Contemporary Gallery Penzance Cornwall
1992 Touring Exhibition. Lancaster & Coventry Universities England
1993 G12 Group: Salt House Gallery St Ives Cornwall
1995 Solo show. Royal Cornwall Museum Gallery Truro Cornwall
1996 Solo show: Centro Cerrado Garrido Donana National Park Andalucia, Spain
1997 Solo show: Galerie Paul Sties Kronburg-Frankfurt Germany
2002 Two man show: Porthcurno Museum Gallery Cornwall
2004 Solo show: Mariners' Gallery St Ives Cornwall
2005: Solo show: Salt House Gallery St Ives Cornwall
2006: Mixed show: Campden Gallery Chipping Camden Glocs.
2007 Mixed show: Oriel Plas Gallery Gwynedd Wales
email: rhoma@hotmail.co.uk
Tel: (UK) 01736 330601 (from outside UK) 00 44 1736 330601