About

Russo uses pens like a paint brush, as if she were layering wet paint onto a canvas.  She approaches her subject as if she was traveling through them and on them, just barely touching their skin, understanding the unique qualities and gesture of the figure and face. This allows the us to not only see her process but connect and relate.  A bit curious and uncomfortable and yet we feel a sense of safety in her haphazard marks.  Each mark is controlled and yet, we feel a sense of freedom and abandonment. 

 

Sometimes it’s the darkness of a nostril or the odd shape of a bottom lip just hanging, just dangling, just melting.  Long fingers crawling up a face about to eat it alive.  An echo beyond the surface of a face, within a lip, within an ear, within the eyes; like a flower, as it slowly begins to die it slowly comes to life.  The ones that live long after they have died, shriveled, and dried; persevering. 

‘I only draw what I see” said Claude Monet, and Russo does exactly that.  The more she looks the more she sees and the more shes willing to let go.