Frailty of human body reflected in collages

By Catherine Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, December 12, 2008

At first glance, Richard Russell’s collages look as beguiling - and predictable - as your grandmother’s scrapbook.

The Atlanta artist cuts out images from vintage books. He might layer them with fragments of old letters, then sheathes the composition in translucent beeswax, which creates a soothing patina like Old Master varnish.

A closer look, however, and the plot thickens. Many of the quaint figures are covered in sores. Then there are the non-sequiturs, like, say, a tooth or two on a table of a still life. Fetuses abound, including one that floats like a balloon attached by its umbilical chord to the forehead of a little boy in “Fever Dream.”

Meticulously crafted and carefully composed, the collages work best when they tug at our unconscious. The pieces that spell out a meaning, such as “Song of the [New] South,” lose the magic upon which these works depend.

Russell frequently depicts plants growing out of human bodies, a motif vaguely reminiscent of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits. Hers were sometimes metaphors for physical suffering. Similarly, images of disease in anatomical and medical illustrations that find their way into his works represent the human body “at its most vulnerable,” he says.

We are as fragile as the yellowing paper he uses in his collages, with no protective layer of encaustic to stop our eventual decay. Yet, images of birth and regeneration counter morbid thoughts, and wonder at the strange turns of the imagination conquers all.