…this is a collection of about five-years-worth of portraits…It's a mixture of colored pencil drawings and collages… for me, this show is really about experimenting with portraiture and with different media, trying to figure out what's the best way to portray a person - is it with really intense photo realistic eye for detail...or could you capture more of a person's energy and identity by obscuring some of that identity and getting a little more abstract, playing with flatness of color?... So this show is a mixture of very close friends and complete strangers… - Russ White
Russ White’s exhibit Face Value opens tonight at the MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids. He joined the morning show to talk about his work, his need for multiple creative channels, and his medium of choice: colored pencils.
… it's all about mark making. A lot of people are surprised when they see my work up close because they assume it's a painting… I think we're used to seeing color pencil done very lightly, kind of airily, as a medium. It's pretty versatile… in my case, I just push really hard and you get a really thick, deep layer of color laid down there...-Russ White
Face Value will be up thru February.
