Vera Russell started out as a self taught artist buying her first oil paints when she graduated high school. She traveled widely as a Navy wife and studied several teachers in her travels and continued with more classes and workshops here in New Mexico when the family settled in Albuquerque. She was involved in the pottery business for several years putting her art on pots and vases. Retired now, she paints in oils, predominantly, but also works in water color and pastels. She paints a variety of subjects, landscapes, still life, large flowers, and seascapes. She has shown her art galleries in California, Scottsdale, Arizona, Charleston, S.C., Scotland, and Spain. She has participated in New Mexico Arts and Crafts Fair several years and also shown at Expo New Mexico, winning Third Place in Oil Painting in 2005. She exhibits her work at the Amapola Gallery in Old Town, Albuquerque, and Gabriel Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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"Oriental Poppy"
18 x 23"    pastel

Russell says:

 ©Vera Russell-All rights reserved

"My oil paintings are traditional in style, though varied in subject matter. I often setup a still life and paint from life because I enjoy the fine details that one sees when painting from life. Although I paint on location occasionally, I work predominantly from my own photos, particularly on large landscapes. I paint a lot of New Mexico landscapes, but I also paint places that I have lived and traveled. I seem to need an emotional attachment to be attracted to paint a scene. My watercolor paintings are more imaginative, looser, more colorful, as in the tropical fish series. I find that many subjects are depicted more successfully in watercolor. I also paint in pastels; again, some subjects seem to demand the flexibility that pastels give. I paint flowers most often in pastels. In trying to capture the brilliance of a color and the delicacy of a petal, I find pastels most responsive. Although I paint in several mediums and have also worked In clay and produced one bronze, I am best known as an oil painter."