29 Aug – 28 Nov 2023
GVPL sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay
385 Menzies Street, Victoria, BC
MTWThFS 10am-6pm
About the Artist:
Based in his hometown of Victoria, BC, Russ is a contemporary realist painter and illustrator focussed on faces and figures. He is also an avid film-goer who developed lifelong “cine-mania” after seeing Indiana Jones and theLast Crusade in theatres as an impressionable eight-year-old in 1989. Movies have been a major source of inspiration for his art, illustration, and design ever since.
Russ is largely self-taught in artistic practice and technique, and his work is hand-drawn and painted using a variety of traditional mediums including acrylics, oils, and coloured pencils. He began publicly exhibiting and selling his artwork in 2015 and many of his paintings are now held in private collections across Canada. He was also awarded Best in Show at the 2017 Sidney Fine Art Show for his painting “Jazz for the Lonely.”
In 2021, Russ decided to combine his background in traditional fine arts with his love of cinema and began focussing on creating pop-culture themed illustrations with a painterly approach.
He is now working on achieving new artistic goals including officially licensed movie, television and sports related artwork for global entertainment brands, pop-culture galleries, and publications. Several of his works are currently available as limited-edition fine art prints at the Hero Complex Gallery in Los Angeles.
https://www.russelltreloar.ca/
Artist Statement:
The works on display here are examples of some of Russ’s new pop culture paintings and illustrations. Each work is an original design concept composed to capture the spirit of the movie or television show that they represent.
To create each piece, Russ typically starts by watching the source material to get a good understanding of a movie so that he can design an interesting concept image – usually just a rough thumbnail sketch at this stage. Then he will rewatch the film and carefully pick out visually interesting scenes, figures and faces as reference images that will be tested and manipulated to form a composition to fit that concept. The composition is then sketched in pencil on illustration board, followed by a layer in acrylic gouache paint and a final textural layer in coloured pencils. Many of these original paintings are later digitized and typography added to create alternative movie posters, special-edition Blu-Ray box covers or magazine illustrations.
