Anna Russell
what’s your craft / what’s your art. if more than one, or if once one now this other, what changed.
[AR]. I studied painting in college. I love the viscosity of oil paint, the play between thick and thin. I made large scale oil and varnish abstract landscape paintings alongside oil wash paintings on vellum. But now I draw with ink. My compositions are small and often in notebooks. I love drawing and painting landscapes from memory or feeling, but I needed to communicate more than that after a while. I wanted to express what I couldn’t express with paint. It needed to be quick and easily shared. The shift happened in 2016 with the Presidential election. Suddenly everything felt more urgent. I saw a Raymond Petibon show at the New Gallery in early 2017, he had drawings tiling the walls, a room of large paintings of waves, and display cases of zines. I had just completed a zine about the Women’s March. I felt an immediate connection. I was at the beginning of a prolific time of art making, and his show was a beacon. I still remember a drawing hung over a door in the exhibit that said “TRY EVERYTHING. DO EVERYTHING. RENDER EVERYTHING.” That spoke to me.
where (town, room, or country) are you right now.
[AR]. My partner calls it the breathing room. I call it the yoga room. The floors are lined with exercise mats, the windows are filled with plants. I have a low table with flowers, candles, incense, and rocks. The room has speakers and a stationary bike. I use this room to revisit my breath. To acknowledge my body. To sit with my thoughts. I’ve been through a lot of personal, physical, and spiritual changes in the last few years. Having and making this space has been important for me.
what are you reading right now. what are you listening to right now.
[AR]. I love listening to books. For the past few years both, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, read by Peter Coyote, and Tibetan Wisdom for Living and Dying, a series of lectures by Sogyal Rinpoche, have been on repeat.
My mom just gave me Bell Hooks’ Communion, and The Will to Change. A while ago she gave me Breathe! You Are Alive, by Thich Nhat Hanh. She always has the right book for me at that moment in time.
I love the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates. My favorites are Between the World and Me, and We were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. This passage in Notes from the Fourth Year (We were Eight Years in Power) really helped me grow as an artist:
“What I know is that by then, I had absorbed an essential message, an aesthetic from Nas and from the hip-hip of that era.
Art was not an after-school special. Art was not motivational speaking. Art was not sentimental, it has no responsibility to be hopeful or optimistic or make anyone feel better about the world. It must reflect the world and all its brutality and beauty, not in hopes of changing it, but in the mean and selfish desire to not be enrolled in its lie, to be coopted by the television dreams, to not ignore the great crimes all around us.”
Hokusai, Mad about Painting was the last exhibition I saw before the pandemic. The show, at the Freer Gallery of Art, blew me away. There were prints from the Hokusai book, 100 Poets, 100 Poems, which I later went home and ordered online. When I don’t know what to draw, I’ll make copies of his prints and drawings, and read the poems.
As for music, I got pretty obsessed with Mac Millers’ posthumous 2020 album, Circles. Childish Gambino’s’ 2020 Album 3.15.20 also gets played a lot around here. I like to sit down and listen to full albums in the yoga room.
in the darkest of times, what material do you reach for.
[AR]. Nibs, a small brush, and walnut ink. The process is very ritualistic for me. I clean my desk, I light a candle and some incense.
Using nibs and brushes force me to slow down. It’s meditative. I clear my mind and draw from the heart. Drawing is an outlet that has saved me. I have hundreds of drawings stuffed in boxes and drawers. Eventually I’ll make another art catalog. I find connection with others in being able to share these drawings.
what is your current obsession.
[AR]. So many things… In 2020, I found my muse. I’ve spent a lot of time drawing him nude or sleeping. I’m also fascinated by psychedelics’ role in consciousness expansion and ego death, and I have a lifelong obsession with dreams and their role in processing experiences.
I am always someone who will listen to the dream you had last night. In 2017, I started a Stress Dream drawing project, where I’ll draw people’s stress dreams. I love it. It’s another wonderful way to connect with people and to connect people through these shared subconscious experiences.
Anna Russell (she/her) is an artist and museum assistant living and working in New Haven, Connecticut. Anna uses the medium of ink drawing to reflect, decipher, and communicate with the world.
