About the Paintings
I create vivid, impressionistic oil paintings that capture the feeling and emotion of my subject matters. From portraits of important personalities to everyday people to beautiful vistas, my unmistakable style of painting is done with expressive color and loose brush strokes, in a wet-on-wet technique called all prima. The literal translation of the Italian phrase alla prima is "at first attempt" and is loosely applied to any painting that is done in a direct, expressive style.

Before I start painting with my brilliant color, I extensively plan out and build a strong foundation for my paintings. This allows me to work out the compositions and the darks and lights that most effectively capture the drama of the piece. Mixing my palette of pure, vibrant color on the fly, I paint from an instinctual manner with a limited number of brush strokes. You can see the texture of every brush stroke in my paintings. The result is an impasto oil painting that has additional depth and movement from the thick texture of the paint.

In my portraits, I not only target the facial characteristics of my subjects but try to discover the human being and soul behind the façade. I analyze every person I portray. I feel that every person is special and unique. I feel that every person who you see, who you meet, who rushes past you has his own story to tell. When I paint, I tell those stories. None of my portraits are a mirror image of the real person but always a portrait of my point of view.
 

A Word on Lighting:
Your painting will look different depending on the changing quality of the surrounding light. Natural ambient light will create a nice feel for your painting during daylight hours, the colors subtly changing as the sun rises and sets throughout the day. At night, however, you will be fully reliant on artificial light to illuminate your artwork. Have you ever noticed how great paintings look in a gallery setting? Art galleries use warm or cool-toned spot lighting to accentuate the colors in the painting, and they usually intensify the light on the painting's center of attention.

You can imitate this effect in your own home by installing halogen or LED directional spot lighting in the ceiling above your painting. These lights are surprisingly inexpensive to install (an electrician can install them in a few hours), and if you wish you can purchase the fixtures and bulbs yourself online. As a general rule, use cool lighting to illuminate a painting that has predominately cool colors, and use warm lighting on a painting with mostly warm colors (the wrong color bulb can cause your painting to look "muddy.")  

Many houses are already fitted with some sort of recessed ceiling fixtures. These can be adapted to directional spot lighting with minor handyman work. Even without direct lighting on your painting, however, the artwork will still present well with nearby incandescent lighting. One thing to avoid is hanging your painting behind a hanging chandelier, which will cast a direct glare spot in the middle of the painting, without highlighting the natural colors and texture of the painting. A light that is angled from above, or even from the side, will allow you to see the thick brushwork, see each subtle variation in color, and truly enjoy your painting in a whole new light.

Enjoy!

Derek Russell, Artist