Today we’d like to introduce you to Cheryl Russell.
Cheryl, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I was constantly drawing and painting, and by my teens I’d moved into layout and photography while helping with my parents’ weekly newspaper. Anything creative — I was in.
Even while I built a long career in marketing, web design, and graphic design, I never stopped making art. I went through chapters of photography, ceramics, sculpture, bookmaking — if it involved materials and ideas, I wanted my hands on it. I spent about twenty years in ceramics classes and took art courses everywhere I lived: Galveston College, Houston Community College, Austin Community College. Eventually an honors painting professor pushed me — lovingly but firmly — to finish my BFA at Texas State.
After graduating, I stepped back from corporate work and finally gave painting the focus it deserved. And honestly, there still aren’t enough hours in the day for all the creating I want to do.
If I had to name the qualities that actually got me here, it’s patience and tenacity. I didn’t get my BFA until I was 59 years old. I always joke that I was on the 30 year degree plan but I finally got there. So yeah, patience and tenacity have carried me through every chapter and every medium, and they’re the thread that runs through my entire story.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Smooth road? Absolutely not — but I don’t actually think it’s supposed to be.
For a long time, the biggest challenge was time. I was building a career, running a business, raising a family, and trying to carve out space for painting in between everything else. I also carried this old belief that “real artists” were some other category of people — usually men, if I’m honest — and that I somehow didn’t qualify. The art world felt male-dominated when I came in, and the whole “starving artist” myth certainly didn’t help. It took years to realize I’d been an artist all along.
On the personal side, perfectionism was a real hurdle. Coming out of the corporate world, everything was about polish, precision, “give it your all,” and “don’t stop until it’s perfect.” That mindset doesn’t translate well to painting. It leads to work that’s tight, overcontrolled, and more sterile than creative. Letting go of that took intention and a lot of internal unlearning.
And then there’s the actual craft — the slow, steady skill-building that great art requires. You have to keep pushing boundaries, breaking rules, testing materials, trying ideas, and being okay with things failing. That part is equal parts exhilarating and humbling.
But what all of those struggles taught me is simple: the beauty is in the curiosity and the freedom. The good work happens when I stop performing perfection and give myself permission to explore.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m an abstract and figurative expressionist painter, which simply means I’m more interested in emotional truth than literal representation. My work leans into gesture, movement, and atmosphere to capture what a moment feels like rather than what it looks like.
Empowerment sits at the heart of how I paint. I tell a lot of women’s stories because it’s the lens I live in — the inner strength, the contradictions, the fear-and-excitement edges, the transformations we don’t always talk about openly. My work moves through that tension between fear and hope, loss and becoming, all the quiet shifts we survive and sometimes celebrate.
People most often comment on my color — whether it’s a bold, expressive palette or a darker field cracked open by a bright flash of unexpected color. But what I’m proudest of is when someone stands in front of a piece and I see it land for them. Not polite interest — a real, personal connection.
I don’t think my work is “set apart” in some grand, singular way — it’s simply true to who I am. I blend abstraction with hints of the figure, I follow emotional honesty wherever it leads, and I try to speak about art in a way that feels human and clear. My work is shaped through the perspective of a woman who believes in hope, resilience, and the quiet courage it takes to see ourselves honestly.
What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is making work that feels authentic to who I am — my voice, my story, my way of seeing the world. I don’t paint from a place of trying to be unique or clever; I paint from lived experience. And I’ve found that when I’m honest on the canvas, the people who’ve moved through similar challenges and triumphs recognize themselves in the work. That connection is what keeps me showing up.
Outside of painting, my family matters deeply, along with my never-ending curiosity about art. I’m always learning — from history, from other artists, from my own experiments in the studio. That curiosity is its own kind of fuel.
At my core, I believe humans are messy, wonderful, profoundly complex, and innately valuable. That belief sits underneath everything I make and everything I do. It’s why I paint the way I paint, and it’s why the emotional truth of a moment matters more to me than the literal picture of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cherylrussell.art
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cherylrussellart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CherylRussellsArt
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylrussell-art/
Image Credits
Cheryl Russell
