Tanya Russell b. 1975

Tanya Russell has been a successful and renowned sculptor for over thirty years.  She began her practice when she was apprenticed to her two sculptor parents (Lorne McKean FRBS and Edwin Russell FRBS) for seven years at the age of sixteen.   This equipped her with the demanding technical language and skills that have allowed her to express herself in her own animal sculptures.  Russell was selected to be a member of the Royal Sculptor’s Society when she was twenty-three.  She has completed many public and private commissions nationally and internationally, including four large public commissions in London.  She founded the Art Academy at London Bridge which is now a degree validated art college and she has authored a book in 2012:  Modelling and Sculpting the Figure. 

Russell works from her studio in Wales where she immerses herself in nature from which she gets her inspiration.  Her ethos is one of care and support for animals and she works from the point of view of ‘how can my work better the lives of animals? How can I support nature, habitats and welfare through my art?’  Russell expresses her work in clay which is an ‘evolving struggle of exploration and respect’.  She portrays subjects close to her heart such as animals at one with their environment, symbolic of a world unharmed by pollution or insensitive development.