Russ Cox

Cox’s oil paintings evoke the sensory feeling associated with place, nature and experience. Works evolve from a process of applying layer upon layer with multiple glazes to create movement, translucency and depth. These works are deeply meditative, becoming more complex as they unfold.

Artist’s Statement:

I endeavor to create paintings that evoke a sensory feeling associated with place, nature and experience. Paintings evolve from a process of successive applications of line and color created with broad intuitive gestural movements, then applying layer upon layer of multiple glazes to create subtlety, translucency and depth. A painting becomes completed for me if it reaches a point of evoking an experiential feeling, with multiple viewers connecting with their own individualized interpretation.

As a process painter, one who mixes spontaneity of expression with reflective development of each painting, my work broadly falls within three themes of often overlapping but abstract experience: works that evoke a memory sense of experience of the natural environment; works that evoke a connection to personal action and movement; works that splash with color, texture and line, evoking a reactive feeling followed by visual movement throughout the work. Generally, I prefer to work on larger pieces so the viewer feels she is walking into the painting, with details that unfold the closer she gets. This is achieved by using a combination of old techniques of glazing and layering while also incorporating contemporary staining, field, splatter, hard edge, and bold color techniques. The bubbling found in many paintings is one that I’ve developed over the last decade, vacillating from a central to subtle element. I paint and rework each piece until the work resonates a feeling of a place, experience or wonder that I appreciate.