My work focuses on the tensions created within the contrasting forces of rootedness and mobility, transparency and opacity, legibility and confusion, and surface and depth. I explore these issues both in acrylic paintings where layered textures and images combine to form surfaces of worn history; and through work with graphite, paper, Mylar and Plexiglas, where I often hide and reveal images of entangled and knotted forms. As a balance and reaction to the organic imagery, I also explore ideas of construction, time, and ruin through drawings of imagined manmade monumental forms. The works included in the 2008 iNDA come from this architectural series of drawings. They are built up gesturally with no plan for the final form, allowed to evolve and grow (much like the organic imagery), and then worked and reworked until enough time has passed to give them a sense of individual history and wear. Through choice of imagery and process, each body of work examines different parts of the ongoing cycle of germination, growth, expansion, decay, and renewal.

born: 1968, Eau Claire, WI

education

University of Iowa, MFA ,1996
Columbia College, BFA, 1990

selected awards/honors

Visual Arts Fellowship, Wyoming Arts Council, 2008
Honorable Mention in Drawing, "31st Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition", 2007
Purchase Award, "National Drawing 2007", The College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Ewing, NJ, 2007

selected solo or two-person shows

"Entangled Worlds", The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI, 2009
"The Empire Paintings: New Work by Doug Russell", The Chait Galleries Downtown, Iowa City, IA, 2008
"Entanglements, Constructions, and a Collaboration", University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, 2008
"Entanglements, Constructions and Medusa", The Mariani Gallery, the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO 2007

selected group shows

"32nd Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition," Bradley University, Peoria, IL, 2008
"International Drawing Annual (iNDA) 2007", Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, Cincinnati, OH, 2008
"National Drawing 2007", The College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Ewing, NJ, 2007
"Evidence and Residues: An Investigation of Contemporary Drawing", University Art Gallery, Indiana State University, Terra Haute, IN, 2007