b.1971, born in Kansas city, MO
lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Russell’s practice is rooted in still life as both a moral and temporal practice. He paints ordinary, often mass-produced objects—porcelain figurines, teacups, alarm clocks, and yahrzeit candles—not to elevate them into symbols, but to stay with them long enough that their quiet authority emerges.
His recent work focuses on objects at the intersection of ritual, domesticity, and history, from porcelain figurines produced at the Allach factory under the Nazi regime to the mass-produced yahrzeit candle, an object of commodified grief that becomes sacred through use and attention. Rather than critique from a distance, his paintings insist on intimacy and duration, slowing down long enough for objects to reveal what they have witnessed and what they still hold.