Anne Russinof

About

Anne Russinof was an American abstract painter whose work examined color and structure in a gestural, expressionist manner. She has been a member of American Abstract Artists since 2014. Born in Chicago, Illinois, she lived and worked mostly in Brooklyn, New York. Education Russinof earned her BFA in Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. She earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Printmaking from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1982. She completed residencies at Yaddo and the Millay Colony for the Arts, both in upstate New York. Technique For Russinof, everything begins with color. As she said, " Color serves to create a window onto natural space and light ." She began a painting by applying color in lyrical , gestural marks. The marks coalesced into a structure, a loose grid. She added layers; color relationships evolve; depth emerged; a sense of form was suggested. If the composition did not resolve itself effectively, she scraped it all off and began again from a place of deconstruction. Her compositions feel intuitive, almost casual, but the process was quite intentional. Russinof came to painting from a background in printmaking. She arrived at oil on canvas after working her way through various mediums, surfaces, and processes. Her later practice fluctuated between works on paper and works on canvas and small-scale and large-scale work. The smaller paintings allowed her to work through ideas quickly. The works on paper allowed her the chance to experiment with new mediums and techniques . Inspiration Russinof was inspired by things she saw: a visceral reaction to manifest a feeling physically through paint. That initial visual stimulus was often related to color. The purpose of the work was not to imitate something she saw or even to capture a sense of it. Rather, she was inspired by the search; the mystery of what would happen; the suspense of waiting to see how the wet layers of paint were going to interact.