Chris Russell’s work emerges at the intersection of observation, reverence, and rigor. Rooted in an enduring relationship with the natural world, Russell’s paintings explore both the emotional weight of memory and the compositional logic of light, space, and regeneration. With a practice that straddles plein air studies, studio precision, and philosophical reflection, Russell invites viewers to witness not just what the world looks like, but how it feels when held with care.

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How do you reconcile the tension between raw, innate creativity and the discipline required to master your craft? 

I don’t really view creativity as innate. Everything comes from experience and is processed into something new through practice. I observe the world and digest influences and my creativity comes from processing all that input. I think “raw, innate creativity” might refer to when things flow and my own work surprises me. Achieving this also requires discipline, in that I need to actively fight doubt and self-consciousness to allow for improvisation, or play. Play, which I believe is essential for art, requires some level of mastery. Oil painting has it’s own technical requirements, if you are familiar with your materials and you know how to control them, then you can play without getting bogged down by the technical challenge. In this way I see discipline and play as inseparable aspects of art-making.

Art is often chosen as a medium for its freedom. Why do you personally turn to art, rather than another form of expression? 

In referring to art, I’m going to say visual art specifically; this is because the visual aspect is what draws me to it. I’m engrossed in observation, color, qualities of light, patterns in nature, and other art and design. I feel fluent in visual language while I struggle with English or other languages. I am dyslexic, which makes written expression laborious. Painting allows me to process my thoughts and communicate without the confines of grammar. I also choose art because it is hands-on, I always need something to do with my hands, I think it is how my mind works. Art also allows me to focused and move at my own pace in a fast paced world of distraction.

Does spirituality or a connection to something larger than yourself influence your creative process?

While I hesitate to say I’m a spiritual person, my connection to and reverence for the natural world is foundational to my creative process. By design, my art practice necessitates spending time outside, something vital to my general wellbeing. Spending time outdoors, I really do get awe struck by nature’s beauty, which motivates me to paint. During the isolation from the Covid lockdown, I found connection and solace by spending time in dense forests I’m so fortunate to live close to. I have also witnessed these forests engulfed in flames from increasingly common wildfires. I am motivated to share this reverence for nature through my art because I’m deeply concerned by our ecological impact. I am truly anxious about the state of our planet but I find hope nature’s resilience and ability to regenerate.

What unusual or unexpected sources of inspiration have deeply influenced your work? 

A few years ago, while visiting a friend in Korea, I purchased a small stone on a wooden base from an antique market. Before this, I already had a collection of rocks, some of which I had even painted pictures. This rock was different from anything I had previously collected because it had a hand carved stand and its value seemed to come from its weathered shape, instead of its mineral composition. In researching what I had acquired, I found the term Suseok, a Korean Scholar’s stone. This ignited a deep dive that started with Scholar’s Stones, and then lead me to rock gardens, flower arranging and landscape paintings from China’s Song dynasty. Growing up in Colorado, I’m a mountain loving rock hound, so landscapes naturally became the subjects of my paintings. While landscape painters through out the history of Western art influenced me, I had remained mostly ignorant of the deeper history of landscape painting and appreciation for nature in the history of Asian art. As I leaned more about the representation of nature in Asian art, I have found that I relate more closely to these ideas. Themes like cycles of interconnected dualities and the garden as a microcosm have greatly influenced to my paintings.

Can you take us through the evolution of an artwork, from that first spark of inspiration to the finished piece? 

For this answer, I’m referring to my large works, painted in my studio, not my smaller plein air pieces that are painted on location from direct observation. Initial ideas for my studio paintings come from two different points. One is direct inspiration from something I’ve seen or an experience I have had. For the second point, I’ll have a visual concept first, and then I’ll try to flush out an image of that concept. Visual ideas are frequently riffs on historical artworks or an expansion on previous work I’ve made. When inspiration comes from an experience, I’m sometimes fortunate enough to photograph what catches my eye, however, much of the time, I’m often not able to capture what I really want to show, with a camera. When I’m trying to paint an image from an idea, I’ll also look for reference photos, sometimes looking for specific elements while out on a hike or bike ride. In either, instance, I end up working from dozens of photos for a single painting, using invention as I paint a composite image. I’ll draw and write out ideas and sketch small compositional studies, but I don’t bother bringing a study to a very finished state before starting a painting. A lot of the final image evolves during the painting process.

 

While the overall compositions are invented I have been moving towards more highly rendered details and more photo-realism, because I’m infatuated by the illusion of depth possible in painting. I often achieve this by working from a combination of physical objects and plants in my studio, and high-res photos. I using various tools to aid in capturing details have such as the classic technique of using a grid. Over the course of a painting; which can lasts from a few weeks up to three months, I’m pulled back and forth between inventive play and obsessively detailed observation.

Do you have any rituals or habits that help you enter a creative state of flow? 

I think that getting into a flow in painting is the most important, rewording and also most challenging part of painting. In order to go from a state of distraction to focus, I find my studio environment is very important. Because of this, I habitually clean my studio. As someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, it is somewhat comical I work with the messy medium of oil paint and when I’m working and mixing color I’m neither clean nor methodical. At the end of each painting session, I habitually tidy up my pallet and studio so that I’m invited to start again the next day. It can be hard to get into a painting because of the scope of the task, especially during the beginning stages of a large piece that is hundreds of hours away from completion. During these times I find small creative tasks make helpful transitions to larger projects. I often start the day working in my studio by arranging flowers from our garden. I’ll also arrange still lifes of rocks, ceramics and other various tchotchkes. It is a time when I am not making work to show, it is just for myself, and it allows me to observe and compose without having to render anything.

Describe a piece you’ve created that has held the most emotional weight for you. What makes it significant? 

I recently painted a pair of large paintings consisting of one landscape and one interior. The first painting, titled “After Life” depicts a large nurse log in a lush Pacific Northwest Forest. This is a recurrent motif in my work, forest regeneration; decaying remains of old giant trees yielding new life. Saplings, moss, lichen and fungus are displayed in abundance like flowers on the grave of a beloved. In the forest I feel a tangible connection between everything growing and decaying all around. 

 

Following the nurse log painting, I painted an interior scene titled, “Still Life on Wood Table” which is curated to reflect the specific landscape. Aiming for a symbiosis between the paired paintings, the plants and objects arranged in the still life correlate specifically to the nurse log. I wanted a visible connection between the objects on the table and the nurse log, a tree that after dying fosters new life. These objects are my personal family keepsakes inherited from relatives. In this pair of paintings, I returned to this idea of regeneration, not only because it is foundational to my ecological beliefs but also in search of solace as I was coping with the recent loss of people I loved. 

 

Among the keepsakes there’s a glass mushroom-shaped lamp, this lamp references both the mushrooms on the nurse log and the painting “Still Life on a Glass Table” by David Hockney. Hockney painted his still life, following the end of a romance and the painting shows Hockney’s intimate observation of objects charged with heartbreak. I turn art in order to process what I struggle to say. As I painted my own collection of keepsakes, slowly observing details of reflection and texture the act became an attempt to hold on the ephemeral.

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Chris Russell paints with a quiet intensity—each canvas layered with technical mastery and emotional resonance. Whether rendering a forest floor or a carefully arranged still life, Russell’s images pulse with a sensitivity to transformation, loss, and the cycles that sustain life. His work is a meditation not only on landscape, but on the enduring act of paying attention.