Elizabeth Russell was born in Massachusetts, and is a painter and sculptor living and working in Berkeley and San Francisco. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts. Russell has participated in group and solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Russell was one of the selected Charter Residents at Minnesota Street Project Studios in San Francisco. In 2016, she received a Travel Scholarship from California College of the Arts and she received The Westcliff Scholarship at Anderson Ranch Art Center that same year. Russell has had two solo shows with Interface Gallery. Her work has been written about by Art Slant, Sight Unseen, Two Coats of Paint and Curiously Direct.. (Full CV)
Press Selections:
The Best Abstract Artists You Should Know About | Architectural DIgest, Clever | Sydney Wasserman | May 2018
Sight Unseen: Saturday Selects - Highlights from this show.
Artspace Highlight
30 Artists and Galleries We Loved During New York Art Week | Sight Unseen | Jill Singer
Anxiety and the art fairs, NADA Edition | Two Coats of Paint | Sharon Butler
Review: Ghost in the Hay: Kim Bennett, Maysha Mohamedi, Laurie Reid, Elizabeth Russel | Curiously Direct | Aaron Harbour
North America's Must See Exhibitions This Fall | Art Slant | Leora Lutz
Elizabeth Russell | Heatseeker
April 20-May 27
“the sun advancing, the disk rising each day to the north of where it leaped from yesterday’s ocean and setting north of yesterday’s setting, the solar disk burning, burning, consuming winter in fire.” – Henry Beston
The sense of shape and color in Elizabeth Russell’s work is deeply informed by her experience growing up near the ocean in Massachusetts, where she grew attuned to the expansive view of water and sky, the simple but resolute gesture of the horizon line, and the experience of light, shadow and shape within that field.
Russell’s series of oil paintings in this exhibition, some quite large in scale, represent an exciting new direction for her work. Evolving from a series of smaller collage-paintings, the new works incorporate a similar visual vocabulary, but the shapes and textures are entirely painted. While abstract, the reduced shapes and color relationships are rooted in experience and memory, relating to space, forms and light encountered in the world around us.
Several new ceramic pieces and a piece of writing by Russell will also be presented with this exhibition. (Download writing here)
The Cut, 2018.
72” x 60”
oil on canvas
Incoming, 2017.
84” x 72"
oil on canvas
Between 10 and 3, 2018.
72” x 60”
oil on canvas
Untitled, 2018
20” x 16”
oil on panel
Untitled, 2018
20” x 16”
oil on canvas
Untitled, 2018
20” x 16”
oil on panel