Russell has carried a spark of creativity for as long as he can remember, fascinated since childhood by the colors dancing in the world around him, to the rhythm of light, shades, and shadows. His creativity led him to experience himself from paintbrushes to hairdressing scissors, which, already building a loyal following in his school days, would become his professional path, studded with brilliant success and widespread recognition. Then, as soon as he carved out a space in his life, painting returned again, this time with a profound spiritual awareness, guiding him along a path of gratitude for life, allowing him to reborn and rediscover himself. Russell Hurlburt’s painting is inspired by meditation and healing, and above all, it is a way of creating that abandons himself to the process, allowing emotions to flow, connecting the artist to the world and the world to the artist. It is an ability to see within and bring forth, almost a catharsis of the soul and a letting go each time. Russell paints the journey within himself with the aim of leaving space for transformation: he is an artist who feels the parallel flow of lives belonging to the same human race, searching for light on the journey through the night, and he is a painter who speaks of beauty and hope to illuminate himself and others on this journey through the darkness. Because the world Russell imagines is a dimension in which everyone can let their light shine. With a generous and kind manner, he told us more in this interview.
– Russell Hurlburt painting Happy Birthday, Photos Jeremy Hurlburt –
Since you were a child, you’ve translated your imagination onto paper using colors. Russell, tell us about your artistic journey.
Growing up in a small town in the countryside of the Allegheny Mountains, I often would have to occupy myself. I remember lying on the ground and looking up watching the beautiful maple leaves twist and turn against the beautiful blue sky above them. My young imagination was so stimulated by both the artistry and the spirituality and have always felt the two were connected.
I remember the times my cousin the hairdresser would visit us. She would set up hair shop in the kitchen of my grandmother’s house. At the age of nine I found my curiosity was spiked, watching her create these shapes and movement and color. I think she recognized my eye for creating she put me right to work and she put a brush in my hand, a comb, some scissors, hairspray and encouraged me to create and style hair.
– Silencing Winter by Russell Hurlburt, Acrylic Paint –
In high school I was an art student really heading towards becoming an art teacher. Creating was a part of who I was. I was so conflicted. Should I be a hairstylist or should I go on to be an art educator? At the age of 17 it was a hard choice. I love the freedom of painting and letting my creativity flow. But on the other hand, I loved cutting my classmates hair in the art room, and after a while, the word had spread about my creativity. I began to build a small clientele.
I went on to become a very successful hairstylist. I’ve been a stylist a colorist for the past five decades. I’ve owned a few salons and I’ve worked on celebrities, NFL players and major political figures and families. But honestly I couldn’t paint because my creativity was drained with my hairstyling and by the time I would get home and wanted to do a painting my energy was fresh out.
A few years ago, as I found my hair career was winding down a bit, I started finding these gaps of space in my life that seemed so empty. I had been a caregiver for my elderly parents in their 80s. They died ten months apart from each other and I found myself in this dark hole of grief with nothing but time on my hands.
I remember one morning I awoke early to voice, whispering in my ear, grab some brushes, find your paints and start creating. I did. It was everything I needed. It became my soul’s freedom, my therapy, my savior. “Wherever I am going, is the same as where I already am” and so I started to show up and stand in front of an empty canvas, and it all began to flow. This time I was turning my inside out I was finding my way back to myself again.
– Dancing Stars by Russell Hurlburt, Acrylic Paint –
– Russell Hulburt and his husband John Percy –
How does this creative process of colors take shape on the canvas?
Although I am inspired by many subjects, I never really know what I will be painting until sometimes it starts to take the shape on my canvas before me. In the process of grabbing a color and the brush, I find myself running the gambit of emotions. I allow myself to laugh and cry and breathe as the colors begin to take my eyes on a journey of creating.
What I recognized in my painting process this time is the difference of having a lifetime of experience that I now bring to my canvas how life has shaped who I really am at the age of 64. I find things out about myself and reminds my soul of its journey with love, and pain, with grace and gratitude. I am painting my own reflection now.
– Russell Hulburt painting Kind King, Acrylic Paint –
My life outside of the salon has led me to working and volunteering with many people who have cancer. Spending time with someone who knows that life has value and a ticking clock really brings awareness to my own mortality and my lifeline. The reflection of life and death of angels among us, and light and energy. I have found myself weeping.
Recently, one of my paintings, entitled “Kind King” brought me to an emotional place I had never experienced. He first came to me in a dream and the next morning with a few strokes of my brush he began to bring himself to the surface of life. His eyes made me begin to weep as I was painting him. I never had felt such profound love, compassion, grace, peace, like I was feeling while I was painting King. The day that I shipped him to the curator Xu Jin of the Linkong Contemporary Art Museum in Beijing, China, I wept as we said goodbye. Now the rest of the world can fall in love with him. Something about my life journey needed to be expressed in King: I value my time creating him, he will forever be my “Kind King”, the savior of my brokenness that I had carried for far too long.
– Curator Xu Jin at the Linkong Contemporary Museum of Art in front of Mister Flora painting, Photo Jocylen Ackwaba Matignon –
If you had to describe the artist Russell Hurlburt, how would you do it?
I would say that Russell, the artist is the same as Russell, the hair designer, Russell, the son, Russell, the friend, the husband, the volunteer, and so on. I have a deep connection to the awareness of the spirit, the life, environment, and the humanity that exists around me. With working so closely over the past five decades with so many people hearing their human experience. I can’t live any of this and so as I carry it with honor on my person, when I paint it, it becomes a reflection of all of this.
I find that my audience is for my paintings are all those who have a mutual awareness of the frailty and vulnerability of living this life. I think my dream exhibit space would be one of pure silence for the viewers to be still. Don’t get me wrong. I have other paintings that I would love to choose to exhibit in a space near a babbling Brook as to hear the energy of water. Or the ideal exhibit for a few of my paintings in large open spaces with loud music that’s unfamiliar to their ears, creating life-changing experiences! My hope for my audiences that somehow they carry a fresh perspective of their life after viewing my paintings and that they feel that they will return again and again and again, and find renewed energy and direction as they view their own journey in my paintings.
– Crazy Dave by Russell Hurlburt, Acrylic Paint –
– Mister Flora by Russell Hurlburt, Acrylic Paint –
Have you always used painting as an expression of spirituality?
I embody my astrological sign of Pisces. Loving the water, I am a dreamer, deeply committed to the emotions of others and myself. Embracing the empathy and the intuition of my artistic nature. I feel highly at tuned to the emotional undercurrent of life that surround me. And I honestly think it is also a layer of my paintings that I bring out, all of it, onto my canvas.
Spirituality is an expression that comes out of me more over the last half of my life than ever before. I had always had a spiritual journey as far back as I can even remember. But as I grew in this awareness of the abundance of the light and grace, and love that was surrounding me, I needed to share it and express it. Look, I have had some very dark, desperate periods in my life. Periods of depression, anxiety, self-loathing. In painting today, it is my therapy. It is my religion, my deepest expression of gratitude and my authenticity as I express myself on this earth. I am an artist. It is who I am.
For further info, please contact Russell Hurlburt
To purchase Russell Hurlburt’s art works, please contact Chrissy Moore at chrissy@chrissymoore.art
Cover photo: Raspberry by Russell Hurlburt, Acrylic Paint
Article edited by Dafne Ambrosio
