Russ Havard Landscape painting tends to draw on the traditional as well as the symbolic. I use landscape to symbolize growth through volatility and conveying beauty within desolation. I use traditional materials such as watercolor, paper, and wood. The end result is not exactly traditional. I grew up working in my Dad’s upholstery shop, learning how to use hand tools and working with wood. This became very valuable in my artmaking endeavors. With my constructed landscapes, I use wood, paint, paper, and razor. I create, break apart and reconstruct images until the pieces are de factocollages, portraying how forces play with both internal and external realities. With my framed works, I isolate the subject matter with a narrow window, using the frame as a sculptural element. This extreme focal point creates a kind of quiet and peaceful quality. I tend to think of the work as hybrids between many interests such as: traditional/ modern, painting/sculpture, realism/abstraction, fragile/prominent, and rural/cosmopolitan. Wide vistas become isolated moments on the horizon. The process of endless building and re-configuring, transcends the physical, and encompasses the spiritual.