Richard Russell (b.1966) Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Richard Russell discovered collage at the age of six, cutting up his parents’ magazines, and has stayed with it till today. And although his studies in photography and graphic design, as well as his current job as a graphic designer drew him to digital collages, he still makes paper and glue ones for the sheer tactile joy of putting cut-outs of vintage books onto paper or in the very spirit of collage, taking things out of their original context, reassembling them, thus creating new meaning. The final touch, however, is often achieved by digital means like resizing, tweaking and printing after scanning the paper collages.

Richard’s attraction to collage as an art form can be best described in its Frankensteinian qualities: the unlimited possibilities of taking apart and putting together all sorts of probable and improbable elements, which for him has an alchemical touch, maybe due to his childhood collection of preserved baby birds, fish, frogs, and other small animals.
The process of hunting and collecting, filing and sorting through material is as essential to his work process as the planning of color and composition in his pieces. Richard sticks to limited palettes, topics and imagery and he describes his creative personality as “analytical and intuitive … bouncing between what feels right and what I learned as classically correct”.