“Russell’s works, with their intuitive orbs and arabesques of black enamel paint, resemble musical scores set free from their staves…collaged printed elements assimilate bits of the real world, or at least references and metonyms, into the frozen music of the pictorial architecture. Some works with their exuberant shapes and dynamic rhythms, belong to the lyrical tradition of Matisse’s cutouts and Stuart Davis’s semi-abstract oil paintings. Biomorphic surrealism is also a source; look at the starbursts, flowers, eyes, flames, and seedpod forms, as well as the typographic elements, hinting at words, sound, and poetry, and Miro comes to mind, as well as such non-surrealists as Rauschenberg and Motherwell. Russell’s lyricism is generally playful, but it has a darker side, too, mixing myth, history and politics.” – Stanford Art Spaces Curator and Writer DeWitt Cheng