RUSSELL WEST
Born: 1964, Portsmouth, UK
Russell West's knowledge of paint, its weight, and movement is an understanding that could not be taught, he has personally developed this unique style over the last 25 years, there is no other artist to rival West's expertise in this ingenious creative technique.
Russell West's intensely coloured, dripping paint artworks draw the eye into a three-dimensional labyrinth of layers and hollows, colours and patterns. West can spend up to a year creating a work, repeatedly applying prepared layers and strips of (just) paint onto pre-arranged wire and pins on a board, then allowing the work, in part, to be defined by the natural effects of gravity and the serendipitous movement of the paint.
Practising as a graphic artist until 1989, Russell west later moved to South East Asia, here he spent many years working as an artist in Hong Kong, the Philippines and India before returning to Britain.
Artwork by Russell West has been commissioned by major hotel and restaurant chains. Russell West has been represented by the Woolff Gallery since 2007 and his work can be found in collections worldwide. West lives and works on the Isle of Wight, UK.
Please contact the gallery on: info@woolffgallery.co.uk with any enquiries regarding Russell West's artwork
Many of Russell West's works are efforts to recreate the chaotic nature of human living conditions that he has witnessed throughout the years, from the bomb-damaged houses of his childhood, the slums of Bombay and the South American Favelas, to the Kowloon walled-city in Hong Kong.
The Kowloon walled-city was an unimaginably densely-packed area that grew to house 33,000 people. Witnessing its demolition in 1993, Russell West was fascinated as the wrecking ball revealed the vast honeycomb of ad-hoc structures within this complex slum, the rooms, pipes, and cables within what he refers to as; "The Man Nest”, all placed as needed by the residents, and all exposed as the homes were destroyed.
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Russell West,
NEIGHBOURHOOD XI
80 x 95cm
Oil on wire on board
Russell West,
LITTLE BOXES XXVIII
50cm x 80cm,
Oil on wire on board
Russell West
Little Boxes XXV
Oil on wire on board
Russell West
180 Apartments
Paint on wire on board
165 x 135cm
As well as the more box like artworks Russell West also creates works where he feeds paint onto wire. Over a period of months he will drip paint along the wire and with the base of the work mounted he will turn the piece in order to allow the paint to find serendipdous path.
Russell West
C² IV
Oil on wire on board
W70cm x H97cm x D13cm
Russell West
Gnab Bang VII
Oil on wire on board
W75cm x H75cm
Russell West,
C² III,
Oil on wire on board in perspex case, W87cm x H72cm x D13cm,
There are also Russell West artworks which have a chunkier feel to them. Initiallty inspired by washing draped across the balconies in Hong Kong, these pieces have developed into a rainbow celebration of colour. With heavier panels of paint arranged over pins, the artworks are almost entirely built up by the weight of the paint as it navigates its way through the hollows of the artwork. And the spongey, tactile, and everso juicy looking 'The Happening' is so called as it happened from discarded sections in the studio, These three dimensional drips are piled one on top of the other and result in a Pollock like creation, in a multitude of Russell West colour.
Russell West
Lingerie
42 x 85cm
Oil on wire on board
Russell West
Where The Clouds Are Far Behind Me
W70cm x H102cm x15cm
Oil on wire on board
Russell West
The Happening
80 x 80cm x 10cm
Oil on board
If you are interested in any of Russell West's artworks, please click on the button to enquire / contact us