Now Showing: Face Value

Paintings and dry-point etchings by Russell Lumb

Opens: February 13, 2025

Russell Lumb is a retired architect from the North of England where he spent the past 12 years studying art and developing his drawing, painting and printmaking skills to a professional level. He relocated to Iowa City in 2023.

Russell’s work is predominantly concerned with the human figure, and particularly, the head. He has made hundreds of life session drawings and paintings and a good number of commissioned portraits. He still enjoys drawing with charcoal and graphite pencils, but his evolved preference is for acrylic painting without preparatory drawing.

“My work has no reason or meaning beyond the making of interesting images for my own satisfaction and for others to enjoy at face value. No one need feel obliged to ‘understand’ the work, although the new painting, A Common Destiny, has American social commentary behind the image.”

- Russell Lumb