B.1971, Kansas city, MO
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Robert Russell is a conceptual painter whose work returns to ideas of memory, iconography, and mortality in a personal painting language that treat ordinary objects—cups, books, figurines, candles—as vessels of personal history and ritual. Working in a subdued palette and precise contemplative approach, he explores how images can be sanctified by attention: how repetition, gesture, and witness can transform the mass-produced form into a site of devotion.
Across series—from his imagined artist monograph ‘Book’ series and engulfing ‘Teacups’ to portraits of Judaica objects—Russell’s work holds grief, memory, and survival in tension with sublime beauty and everyday function. His latest series, including Porzellan Manufaktur Allach, Stateless Objects and the Yahrzeit candles, extend these inquiries into how objects become witnesses of history and repositories of truth and meaning.