Lyndsay Russell

Prior to commencing an MFA post graduate course in contemporary art at Kingston School of Art (2022), Lyndsay Russell was a best-selling author and illustrator. She currently lives and works on a Kingston houseboat  moored on the Thames.

In the exhibtion you can see works from her Aqua Nebulae series which is inspired by and uses the waters of the Thames around Kingston.

Russell says, “Fluid dynamics take over – the drops swirling round items with all the subtle or rough oscillations that nudge the hull. Using delicate tools I encourage the ink shapes, playing with the viscosity of both the river water and the paints to create very different, aleatory imprints”.

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‘With alchemy, she conjures up natural, microscomic water versions of the universe’ Poppy Huggett - Newsquest Media Group

Renowned for making fine art out of the ‘muddy water’ of the Thames, Lyndsay Russell creates her ethereal artworks from a houseboat moored on the river in Kingston. Forced by the national lockdowns to seek inspiration at home, Russell turned to the water lapping about her boat and used it to produce other-worldly images and installations that reveal the  innate beauty of the water’s movements. Employing the wind and natural rhythm of the boat to move inks, oils and paints across containers of river water, the artist captured the random patterns generated by the water’s motion in photography or film. Printed on silk and animated by a fan, or shown on a large monitor accompanied by her own electronic music score, the resulting images are used to simulate the river flow. Noticing the way in which these watery dynamics mirror the forces found in space - and the curiosity, that in reproducing the water she also manifests the gravity-wave oscillations of the universe through the media of ink, oil, paint, sunlight and LED lighting - Russell titled one series ‘Aqua Nebulae’.