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Gregory Russell (b. 1955, Washington, DC) works across collage, pastels, charcoal, and oil paint, reincorporating representational and narrative elements into a style influenced by Abstract Expressionism’s energetic use of color and form. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art— from which he received his BFA and MFA degrees in painting and drawing—where he worked closely with Salvatore Scarpitta, a painter and sculptor known for dimensionally wrapped canvases and complex studies of motion. After graduating, Russell spent eighteen months in Harare, Zimbabwe, as a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellow, where he produced a Neo-expressionist body of work that emerged in response to a new “environment of different colors, different plants, people, and different smells and sounds.”
Beyond his artistic practice, Russell also worked as a social worker for disadvantaged youth, which brought him to a full awareness of the systemic biases endemic to American culture. He later reflected that confrontations with “institutional racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and ageism” allowed him to “clarify [his] life’s vision.” Emphasizing art’s capacity to transform, he has said, “Art and artists can give vision, should instruct, should direct, give hope, and guide and lead.”
Russell’s work has been shown at institutions including the Alternative Museum, New York; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Civic Center Museum; Foundation Gallery, New York; and the Festival of Black and Hispanic and Native American Arts, Pittsburgh.
