We recently connected with Russ White and have shared our conversation below.
Russ, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?
I worked as a high-end cabinet maker for several years at a great woodshop in Chicago before moving to Minneapolis. My job was to build fancy kitchens and closets and whatever else and then go install them, and I’ve carried a lot of lessons from that time into my studio art practice. The first is that, as an artist, you are both the boss and the employee — so sometimes you need to plan and think and network and strategize, and other times you need to just show up to the studio and sand a stack of plywood. The “shut up and work” mentality can help me snap out of creative ruts and get me moving on pieces I’m unsure about, and that’s when the really good stuff actually happens.
That’s the other big lesson I apply from woodworking to a painting and drawing practice: don’t rely too much on a blueprint. As a cabinet maker, you’re handed the plans to a kitchen, and you go build it. The decisions have been made for you. I find this very similar to the photorealistic passages in my drawings: I hand myself the source image, the layout of the piece, and the color palette, and then I can kind of zone out and just render. It becomes very meditative, but I think the work gets more energy when I force myself to snap out of it and make decisions in real time in front of the canvas. Let the plan guide where you start, not where you end up. (Then you realize that the worker is actually more important than the boss.)
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a studio artist whose work consists of large scale colored pencil and mixed media drawings with a focus on portraits and bodies. These are drawings about drawing, part of an ongoing practice of formal studio experimentation in search of a balance between spontaneity and rigor. Some sections are laboriously rendered bits of colored pencil photorealism while others are scribbled or painted quickly and freely. Portraiture is an act of protracted observation; it provides an excuse to stare. The longer and the closer you look, the more a body will break down into its component parts: tone, texture, form, and line. The observation I’m interested in is at once methodical, in the elaborately rendered details of a person’s skin or hair, for example, and intuitive, through quick marks and instinctive color choices.
There is a certain dissolution of the body that occurs in my work. What begins with original source photos becomes, on canvas, a wrestling match between control and accident. Over the past five years, I find myself asking the question “What is the purpose of this drawing?” Is it to maximize the craftsmanship and polish of a photorealistic rendering, or could it be something more challenging, something that forces evolution in my use of media and mark-making?
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Pay them.
I feel very lucky to live and work in the state of Minnesota, which has a robust support structure of funding opportunities for both emerging and established artists — primarily through local and regional grants and fellowships — but even still our large arts organizations are going through no small degree of turmoil at the moment. Case by case, these issues vary from mismanagement to bad luck, but they all underscore the knife’s edge on which the arts exist even in states where they are not being actively defunded.
Artists are scrappy and will often find ways to make their work against poor odds, but if we invested more money in art education in schools, in subsidizing artists’ needs (especially in marginalized communities where there is less generational wealth to prop up young creatives), and in purchasing artists’ works and paying for artists’ labor, those investments would pay dividends in return. The 2018 Minneapolis Creative Vitality Index has the receipts: for-profit creative sales contributed $5.1 billion into Minneapolis’ economy — nearly 9.2 times the size of Minneapolis’ sports sector revenues (and we are home to teams in the NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL, and MLS).
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
There are any number of ways to quantify success in a studio practice, and one’s goals are bound to evolve as your career progresses and you hit different benchmarks. My goals at the moment are to make better work, month after month, and to place that work in exhibitions and collections so that I can go back to an empty studio and make more.
Towards that end, my work is available through my studio as well as through Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs, California. Currently I have a solo exhibition of brand new drawings on canvas at The Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin. Find me on IG, and drop me a line!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://russ-white.com
- Instagram: @russwhiteart
Image Credits
Photo of the artist working by Scott Streble