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 hide and reveal images of entangled and knotted forms. The works included in iNDA come from two somewhat more traditional series of drawings. Both the "Another Nature" and "Medusa" series seek to combine imagined organic forms within an confused mass of growth.

 

born: 1968, Eau Claire, Wisconsin

education

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

selected awards/honors

Purchase Award, "National Drawing 2007", The College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Ewing, NJ, 2007

selected solo or two-person exhibits

"The Empire Paintings: New Work by Doug Russel," 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, 2007
"Structural Considerations," Baseline Workshop and Gallery, St. Louis, MO, 2005

selected group shows

31st "Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition", Bradley University, Peoria, IL, 2007
"Evidence and Residues: An Investigation of Contemporary Drawing",
   University Art Gallery, Indiana State University, Terra Haute, IN 2007
"Drawing No Conclusions", Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI, 2007
"Soundings: Aesthetic Interpretations of the Environment,"
    A Group Invitational Exhibition, Exhibitrek: The Gallery, Boulder, CO, 2007