RUSSELL YOUNG MARILYN PORTRAIT (RED)

RUSSELL YOUNG is a British-American artist best known for large silkscreen paintings using imagery drawn from recent history and popular culture. From an early age, he was powerfully drawn to the idealized drama of the American dream. 

In school, he studied film, drawing, photography and graphic design. After college he moved to London and gained recognition photographing the early live club shows in the late 1970s of Bauhaus, R.E.M. and the Smiths.

His innate eye for movement landed him photoshoots for magazines and eventually his first record sleeve cover for the 1986 album Faith by George Michael. During this period he shot portraits of Morrissey, Björk, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, New Order, Diana Ross, and Paul Newman. In the following ten years he directed many music videos, working with artists ranging from the Brand New Heavies to Eartha Kitt.

In 1999, Russell Young gave up photography and directing altogether and began to concentrate on art and to devote himself to painting. Now in his art, he alludes to the great Pop artists of the past and reinvents bold, sometimes brutal, imagery while bearing witness to the ambition and glamorous excesses of twenty-first-century America.

Art Historian John Finlay said "His large silkscreen paintings of popular culture [show] a creative individual steeped in contemporary glamour, his work expressive of the shock and awe of fame, or those in close proximity to its glare and grit.”

MARILYN PORTRAIT (RED) (2014) from the portfolio Marilyn Portrait by Russell Young is a hand-pulled acrylic and enamel silkscreen on paper. Marilyn Portrait (Red) is an edition of 25 and is signed and numbered. For more information about Russell Young or the Marilyn Portrait Portfolio, please contact the gallery. SOLD