Russell Young

Russell Young, born in 1959 in Yorkshire, is a British-American artist best known for his large-scale silk screen paintings examining cultural icons, the nature of fame, and the souring of the American Dream. Young photographed many music stars throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, REM, The Smiths, Bauhaus, Diana Ross, Paul Newman, Björk, and many others. He went on to shoot over 100 music videos for leading artists during MTV’s height in the 1990s, which brought him to the United States. Young eventually moved to California, where he began his current practice with his sold-out show Pig Portraits in Los Angeles in 2003. The many series that have followed demonstrate his visceral analog processes and signature use of diamond dust.

Young’s work is included in many prominent private and institutional collections including those of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, David Bowie, Drake, Angelina Jolie, David Hockney, Kayne West, Brad Pitt, and others, as well as The Getty Collection in Los Angeles and The White House Collection in Washington, D.C.