Adam Russell

www.STUDIOROOTS.com

Painting, Illustration, Portraiture, Contemporary painting, Urban Expressionism, Art, Graffiti, Hip Hop, Reggae

Senses of the body and mind alert us to the millions of words, symbols, gestures, pictures, vibes, colors, feelings, songs, and memories that collide with our every second. Inside the mingling, web-like cipher that all these colliding elements create-- meanings are born. Our ongoing relationships, current interactions, and established remembrances are all linked together forming continuities. These continuities compose our reality and inform us of our own active participation in the inner workings of a whole, a larger pattern of truth. The fabric of existence as a garment knitted from one thread, a single story with many turns and connections.


I create artwork as a visual map-collage of the turns and connections that I experience personally. The work is made of the images and meanings from my own human experience, translated from mind to hand and born into the physical. My intention is to notice, document, and share my interlinking experiences as an offering, as an intentional contribution to the whole community of life. Paying attention to interconnection and actively participating in its constant creation is like holding a key to our mysteries. We need to create and not just consume to remain healthy. Giving and accepting is a natural and observable part of every cycle, in nature a balance must be attained. I know my art as an effort toward a sustained equilibrium and I create paintings with the intention of adding what I've learned into the circulating winds of our collective experience.


In my work I utilize the technical and conceptual skills brought to me by my teachers, my foreparents of contribution. Masters of form, vision, meaning, word, sound and all consequent power, from as diverse of backgrounds as one could imagine. My influences are here, assembled by great truth and living on through our current works. In my art I want to honor them with elements of pigment, oil, wheat paste, gold leaf, illusion, spray paint, portraiture, history, adornment, and hard work in combinations to express their profound meaning. My diverse role models in concert utilize, respect, and carry on long standing practices while exerting new meanings as a result of their free association. My artwork is a unique expression that exhibits many aspects of a single, very old truth. It is of great intrinsic value to me as its creation is my greatest teacher.

Hailing from Toledo, Ohio: Adam Russell references the postmodern aspects of hip hop culture to assemble heartical compositions based on a sampling and mixing of life’s imagery. Created, the collage style artworks display painted representations of this life imagery associated and assembled freely to create visual rhythm and relay the vibes and intentions of the artist, while leaving room for viewer interpretation. Semiotic life maps, the paintings have actual meaning?a reconciliation between contemporary art form and the ancient truth. The artwork shows in galleries across the Midwest and East Coast as well as appearing on/in book covers, magazine articles, and record covers across the country.