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Russ Warren, The Ready Jokester, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 in.
April 1 - June 11, 2023
Christopher Newport University
Russ Warren combines expressive mark-making and surreal imagery in works characterized by vibrant color, bold pattern, and exaggerated, often humorous imagery. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, since 2008, Warren has been producing and exhibiting work for nearly five decades. This exhibition features a number of key works from earlier in the artist’s career, but focuses primarily on his production over the past five years.
“If My Thought Dreams Could Be Seen”
Russ Warren, The Comet, A Surprise Morning, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 in.
Russ Warren, The Angels’ Morning Surprise, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 in.
Russ Warren, The Minotaur in my Backyard, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 in.
Russ Warren, Flip, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in.
The artist’s large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas explore recurring themes such as still lifes with instruments or fruit; large cubist-inspired heads; stylized animal figures; and, most recently, “human” figures experiencing anguish, confusion, or surprise.
Left: Russ Warren, Still Life with Melons, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 in.
Right: Russ Warren, Still Life with Mandolin, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 in.
Russ Warren, Still Life with Guitar and Melons, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 in.
Left: Russ Warren, Don’t Look Twice, 2022-23. Oil, acrylic, and newsprint on panel, 22 x 18 in.
Right: Russ Warren, Young Horse, 2022-23. Oil, acrylic, and newsprint on panel, 22 x 18 in.
While acrylic on canvas is the artist’s primary medium, Warren also creates multi-layered collages as well as “livestock marker” paintings made with sticks used for marking cattle. He has also produced sculpture intermittently since 1971.
A prolific artist, Warren is compelled to paint every day. His artistic inspirations range from the work of Pablo Picasso and Rufino Tamayo, his earliest influences; to Spanish masters such as Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya; to diverse 20th-century artists including Jean Dubuffet and Roy De Forest. Surrealism, with its emphasis on dreams and magical realism, is an abiding influence, as is Mexican folk art and the landscape and imagery of the Southwest. Warren melds these influences into his own unique synthesis of symbols and imagery, employing line and color as well as wild variations in scale and shadow to conjure an alternate universe. Warren’s most enduring influence, Picasso, can be clearly felt in the artist’s cubist-inspired imagery, his choice of subject matter, and especially in works paying direct homage to Picasso, such as Warren’s variation on Picasso’s famous Three Musicians of 1921.
Russ Warren, Three Musicians, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in.
Russ Warren, A Fire on the House, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 in.
Russ Warren, We Sat Around in a Circle, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 in.
The subtitle of this exhibition, supplied by the artist, is borrowed from a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, entitled “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” The song concludes with these lines: “And if my thought-dreams could be seen/ They’d probably put my head in a guillotine/ But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.”
Russ Warren was born in Washington, DC, in 1951. He grew up in Houston, Texas, where he began his training as an artist at the University of St. Thomas in 1969. After transferring to the University of New Mexico, he received his BFA in 1973, and later earned his MFA from the University of Texas in San Antonio in 1977. Warren taught painting and printmaking at Davidson College from 1978 – 2008, while exhibiting extensively throughout the United States and abroad in such prestigious exhibitions as the 1981 Whitney Biennial and the 1984 Venice Biennale. Warren’s work is held in various museum collections including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Russ Warren, Seated Woman, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 in.