Russell T. Gordon

Russell T. Gordon (July 3, 1936 – November 2013) was an American painter and printmaker. He moved to Montreal in 1973 where he was a visiting professor then faculty member at Concordia University until he retired in 1998.

Early life and education Gordon was born in Philadelphia in 1936. He received a BFA from Temple University in 1962, an MS from the University of Wisconsin in 1966 and an MFA from University of Wisconsin in 1967. the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.

Gordon himself explains how he creates art and his art life as an artist and an art teacher and how to understand his work and elements that should be considered when watching his works. Each work of his has juxtaposition and synthesis, which are the modus operandi through which the artist shifts. He also Russell rejects "ism" and the culture of a lot of art making. He insists that it is essential to develop a capacity to make use of variety; and to understand that one can make use of the value of expression through contradiction or difference. He has been busy with this process for most of his life; it is how he comes to be who he is. He believes that images, like words, are in themselves meaningless and are resurrected in context. And abstract images are redefined in new settings and media, thereby changing their significance and at the same time, reminding us of their meaning in other situations.

"There is the additional layer of achievement: not of mere social climbing or vain self-satisfaction, but of searching for and attaining human success which serves as evidence of a man's ability to shape his own destiny and achieve his own ends. A strong Nieteschean pulse marks the levels of achievement attained by Gordon, from his initial obtention of a university diploma - to his family's largely uncaring surprise - to his position of program director in a major university art department.""Russell Gordon's works point out the paradox of a contemporary painter using a language which is lush in detail, rich in color and prodigal in its use of shapes and forms, in order to speak to a viewing public more familiar with decoding messages from simpler, more ascetic or pared-down visual clues. The baroque figures and signs or Russell Gordon come as a bit of a jolt at a time when less is supposed to be more.""Gordon's work takes on a Hegelian dimension when it transposes the results of an exploration of phenomena, namely those thing which present themselves to our consciousness, into a distillation of the absolute, logical, ontological and metaphysical spirit which underlies those phenomena, which in turn determine knowledge of life's essence." Maurice Forget,

Awards 1972 - , Denmark 1975 - MacDowell Fellowship, New Hampshire 1981 - National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient 1986 - Award of Excellence from The Museum of Science and Industry

Exhibitions

1985 Masks with Robert Holland Murray, Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges, Montreal.