Bright Colors and Femininity Come Together with Her Coloring Box
With red lips and a kind smile, Jamie Russell is the artist that every young female has been searching for. Bright colors of pink, purple and blue are found on her canvases. She wants to be known as a female artist, and for her color palette. Exploring different sides of femininity with colors, she created her brand -- Her Coloring Box. From her start to where she is today, Russell is an artist that everyone should support.
Observing her three older siblings take Advanced Placement Art classes in high school, influenced Russell to follow the same path of taking the art class. When she did take the class, Russell fell in love with making art. Unlike her siblings that went off to different career paths, Russell continued in her pursuit of art and was going to become an art teacher. “I was working in a camp where I was the art teacher,” she said. “I basically realized, like children, they’re not my jam.” Deciding to focus her career goals solely on creating art, led her to create her own brand, Her Coloring Box.
The pandemic, though a trying time for everyone, gave Russell time to dive deeper into her creative side. “I was able to be home and kind of just hone my skill,” she said. With the encouragement of her friends, and putting her timid feelings aside, Russell finally created her own brand for the paintings she creates. Her Coloring Box was something that Russell believes should have come sooner, but the pandemic definitely gave the time to let that happen. “I was able to really invest in myself and try to really have my own thing grow and be proud of something that I do myself,” Russell said.
Every thriving artist has a niche that makes them stand out. For Russell, it took a bit of searching and realization to find what she wanted to convey with her art. “I feel like I was really lost for a long time,” she said. “I really didn’t know what I wanted to draw or paint.” For a year, all Russell did was paint apples, which really was not amusing or inspiring to her. Finally, creativity struck when it came to working with colors and painting faces. “Faces have so many different curves, and different textures, and different shades,” Russel said. “It’s not like an apple where it’s always the same thing.”
Once Russell started to focus on portraiture, she also incorporated femininity. As a woman, Russell was getting interesting critiques in art school. Her work was viewed as too feminine and girly, that it wasn’t serious enough. Instead of straying away because of the criticisms, Russell embraced them and started to work with it. “I was like -- oh, I’m gonna get real girly. I started using a lot more pinks and my niche was born out of that place of being told your stuff is too girly,” she shared. This also sparked the way that Russell came up with the concept of her brand. She wanted Her Coloring Box to exude feminine empowerment and stick to her roots of being colorful with everything she creates.
Being an artist means having to be open to harsh criticisms but it can be even more difficult as a female artist. “You get questioned about a lot of what you do, and your sincerity in it,” said Russell. After painting a piece on breastfeeding. Russell got hard critiques of why she made it and wondered why she was talking about breastfeeding if she wasn’t a mother. Her response was, “well, someone has to.” As a female artist, Russell shared that with critiques like these it puts an artist in a constant state of defense for their work and the story behind it. When she started focusing on creating artwork with fairy tales, like the Princess and the Pea and Alice in Wonderland, she was getting criticism as to why do it if it was too girly, commercial, and boring. “It’s not boring to young women that this is all we’re surrounded by,” said Russell. “I should be allowed to explore it.”
Not only does Russell bring fairytales to life in her paintings, she also explores the female figure in other works. “I feel like it’s really important for women to depict and explore the female figure. Just because it’s been depicted and explored for centuries, by men,” Russell said. Looking around a museum like the Met or the MoMa, a large percentage of the paintings of nude women are painted by men.
Learning about this is what led Russell to want to capture the women’s view of their own unique and beautiful bodies. “I do have a drawing series of nudes, and I like to capture different body types,” Russel said. “Not everyone is going to be the same look, I am going to have curvy people, I am going to have thin people, because I think it’s all beautiful.” Another feature that Russell likes to include in her paintings is body hair. “In paintings, people don’t really paint the body hair for women throughout history, so I just really want to capture what we see every day,” she shared. The ability to see oneself in a work of art can be very inspirational for women who see themselves in Russell’s paintings.
Getting her work and brand out there has brought Russell a lot of success, especially when she partnered with PYNK NYC. “It was a really great networking opportunity, and actually doing the PYNK event in Norwood, that was my first time coming out as my brand,” she shared. Even though it was nerve-wracking and exciting, the event let her meet a lot of great people. Russell even got into a gallery after meeting someone at PYNK NYC.
Having pieces up for people to see is a vulnerable experience for an artist. After getting hard critiques in art school, Russell first went in with her guard up at her first PYNK event. She had painted over everything that she was told in art school and with her brand wanted to push forward no matter what others thought. Fortunately, she received a different experience. “I got a lot of really positive feedback, which was not what I was used to, so I was really happy,” Russell said.
Russell advises other young female artists to be strong in their convictions and hold their stance in their work. “Don’t be intimidated by the people that speak to you with confidence,” she said. “Just because someone says something confidently doesn’t make it true.” Russell also shares that if young artists are invited to showcase work somewhere, to be sure to do research. Not just saying yes out of excitement, but to be sure the venue and people that work there are what artists want associated with them.
Russell is finishing paintings for her fairy tale series. One piece she was very excited for was inspired by Snow White, but she’s Latina. For the Halloween season, Russell is working on a variety of paintings. She also has an upcoming art show Oct. 23 and 24 at 30 Vandam Street. More information on the show and all her work is available on the Her Coloring Box website. You can also see her current and upcoming work on Instagram.