J.R. Mooney Galleries
“Mooney Makes Sense” Podcast Series Presents:
An Interview with Artist Russell Stephenson By: Katherine Shevchenko
This June, J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art hosted San Antonio artist and contemporary abstract painter, Russell Stephenson, and his new body of work entitled Mindscapes. Russell Stephenson took some time on the eve of his show’s opening to discuss his art and his current modes of thought and influences that are currently driving his work. A native Texan, Stephenson has been based out of San Antonio for the past 11 years, but has ventured throughout the United States observing and gathering inspiration for his art. Stephenson elaborates, “Throughout my extensive travels and explorations, I’ve been all over the United States… I’ll always try to bring some of the inspiration that I always got from nature into the work in one form or another.” As an artist, Russell Stephenson has been on a lifelong journey that started early in his life, “I’m one of the stereotypical artists that was born with a pencil in my hand and I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil and scribbling on the walls with crayons. My artistic journey started from then and has become this long paced development of an unique voice that has developed over time through professional academics and my own experimentation.” Everyday life and its challenges and joys merge into his abstractions; they are processed through his hand as he creates. “So periodically, my work changes and evolves, depending on how I’m growing in that particular period and what occurrences happen in the news on a daily basis. And what events occur in my own life and times and the people that I know and it all kind of gets thrown into a blender, so to speak, and mixed in together and it all comes out in one form or another in the studio when I work.” When Stephenson works, the execution and craft are at once in force, picking up anything that can be used to translate the feeling and effect he is striving to achieve. Stephenson elaborates, ”I’m always experimenting with different techniques and different tools in order to explore the mark-making aspect of my work.
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PLUME-TX Magazine
Reviews/ Commentary/ Exhibitions/ News/ Events, Summer 2015