Russell C. Smith

RUSSELL C. SMITH MAKES ART TO STOP TIME.

His collage and mixed-media artwork draws on a full life of art-making and art appreciation, engaging with the cultural now as much as with art history greats. Working nights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1980s immersed him deeply in the vast story of visual art – as well as in the galleries, halls, basements and rooftops of it – though he found more inspiration in collage works by Kurt Schwitters, Picasso, and Joseph Cornell at the MOMA. His playful deconstructions and reconstructions of vintage source material are enhanced by his intensive study in life drawing and painting, enlivened by vibrant brushwork. Each piece is a captured moment from a creative flow state.