Black and Light, The Highlands Current
By Alison Rooney on
Cold Spring painter frames action with darkness
Growing up, painter Russ Ritell was a fan of page-turners such as Tales from the Arabian Nights and sci-fi fantasies, which gave him, he says, “vivid pictures in my head.”
The Cold Spring resident was also a fan of illustrators such as N. C. Wyeth and Dean Cornwell, which led to an appreciation for their antecedents: artists of the Italian Baroque and pre-Renaissance periods, Spanish painters and the Dutch masters of light.