Christopher Russell
I am exploring my perception of and connection with the natural world. I am interested in a spirituality that is connected to the cycles of nature, an infinitely complex yet entirely tangible world. I examine alternative outdoor lifestyles that appropriate ideas from indigenous cultures and infuse them with an emerging consciousness of ecology.
Through images of wilderness, I am trying to communicate my reverence for nature, a reverence tempered by notions of disconnection and disillusionment. I work within the old genre of landscape painting because I believe our human connection to nature is increasingly important in the contemporary world. The landscapes I paint are not as much about reproducing places I have seen, as they are about the process of creating a painting that ultimately reveals something new to me. Part of my process is meditative labor while the rest is a struggle to dig myself out of a mess of paint in the search for balance between clarity and surprise.