Stephen Russell-Brett Art

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Stephen Russell-Brett Art

Official page of Contemporary Multimedia Artist, Curator & Narrative Alchemist Stephen Russell-Brett.

12/07/2025

VEIL OF ERASURE

𝘈 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘮𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳.

135 lamellae for 135 months between global coral bleaching events.
Hahnemühle Britannia. Embossing. Gesso. Tea. Time.
Mounted on 100% red cotton - the warning is silent, but urgent.

𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳
𝘛𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦
𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵

11/07/2025

STUDIO MOOD

𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨.

The studio is quiet, but not still.
Work spreads itself in increments - measured, then let loose.
Paper curls at the edge. Light hums on aluminium.

Nothing here is staged. This is how the work lives between decisions.

09/07/2025

TEA-STAINED RITUAL

Steeped in silence, not pigment.
Each sheet is hand-stained - bathed in steeped hours.
The paper becomes a skin for time.

This is process as quiet ritual -
transformation, not decoration.

07/07/2025

FRAGMENTED EDGE

Where it begins is where it breaks.
A single lamella - torn and vulnerable to gravity.
It bends under heat and memory.

This is where Spectral Taxonomy begins: with erosion, not architecture.

04/07/2025

WHY PAPER? WHY NOW?
Impermanence demands a material that can fail.

Paper tears. Warps. Yellows.
It holds a memory of every hand, every hour, every mistake.

In Spectral Taxonomy, paper is not a medium.
It is the message.
Delicate, human-scaled, and always at risk of disappearing.

Just like the reefs we mourn.

03/07/2025

THE STRUCTURE OF LOSS
Even grief has its architecture.

Spectral Taxonomy uses lamellae - thin, paper-like blades -
to translate time into form.

In 𝘝𝘦𝘪𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦, 135 lamellae = 135 months between major coral bleaching events.
Other works use spacing, staining, and tearing to record absence, resistance, or surrender.

Each piece is designed as a layered system.
A taxonomy not of life, but of what is vanishing.

02/07/2025

SPECTRAL TAXONOMY

A taxonomy of grief, mapped through impermanence.

24 artworks.
Each built from torn lamellae - stained, embossed, or erased.
Each tracing the spectral presence of coral bleaching across time.

This series does not illustrate.
It mourns.
And it remembers.

Grief becomes material. Time becomes form.

01/07/2025

THE ART OF BEGINNING

Before the tear. Before the taxonomy. Just breath, and paper.

This is where the series began; not with form, but with a feeling.

A roll of Hahnemühle Britannia 300gsm cold press paper.
Not a blank surface, but a collaborator.
In the tradition of kami, paper holds a presence of its own, something to be honoured, not used.

Before Spectral Taxonomy became a mapped grief, it was this:
a meditation on mujō - impermanence - and the quiet intelligence of materials.

I no longer think of paper as passive.
It tears the way grief tears.
It resists. It softens. It stains with memory.

This series spans 24 works, each built on layered lamellae - paper blades that track ecological loss through material language.

But this is the moment before that.
Before the violence. Before the structure.
The art of beginning.

"Paper isn’t just a surface for ideas; it’s a collaborator in the conversation between what remains and what vanishes." - Stephen Russell-Brett

26/06/2025

Working Title: Whisper Bloom Test Strip
(from the Spectral Taxonomy studio log)

Behind the veil again - this time, trying out a new coral lamellae palette with a little more hush and a little more heart. Moody mauves, rose oxide, and hints of faded yellow lean into a different kind of mourning. I’m letting pink breathe here - not as a flourish, but as a residue.

Also playing with texture: pressed shell patterns, scratched pigment lines, and thread as memory. Each paper lamellae is torn, painted, or imprinted as a fragment - a reef’s lingering whisper rather than its

There’s something satisfying about testing things that don’t yet know what they are. This piece isn’t finished, but it’s already speaking.

22/06/2025

Staining isn’t a single gesture - it’s an accretion.

Layer after layer, the tea is brushed or pooled, then left to dry. Again and again. Each pass softens or deepens, leaving behind faint tide lines, like memory pressed into paper. What begins as liquid becomes imprint - tonal strata that mimic the slow erosion of coral reefs.

In Spectral Taxonomy, these layers aren’t just colour - they’re time itself, mapped through steeped plant matter and quiet patience.

Tea as a material has deep roots in Japanese art. Beyond its presence in the tea ceremony, it has long been used to age paper, tint scrolls, and evoke the natural wear of impermanence. Artists seeking wabi-sabi - the beauty of things modest and weathered - often turned to tea to imbue their work with softness, quiet decay, and a sense of time held gently.

21/06/2025

☕🫖 Three bowls. Three teas. Three hues of time.

Green tea, rooibos, and black - all seeping quietly into paper, echoing the tonal drift of coral reefs in decline.

In the studio, tea isn’t just a drink - it’s a dye, a timeline, a ritual. I stain each lamella of Spectral Taxonomy by hand, letting the tannins map subtle erosion - some soft as breath, others scorched like low tide on bleached bone.

Each tea brings its own mood:
🌿 Green tea whispers early loss.
🧡 Rooibos (my daily cup) hums warm resilience.
🖤 Black tea marks the final fade.

There’s a quiet moment each afternoon where my brush and teacup nearly trade places. A small studio blur - between making and musing.

17/06/2025

Behind the Scenes | Lamellae in Transition ✂️📜☀️

Studio floor chaos - the beautiful kind.
The original red lamellae from Veil of Erasure are lounging next to the fresh-cut blue-toned ones, all mid-conversation about texture, grief, and maybe lunch. Strips of sun are pouring through the blinds, patterning the paper like a barcode of light and intention.

I’m currently prepping the next set of smaller works - same bones, same quiet rituals, just scaled to an intimate size. The new backboards are stacked and waiting like polite dinner guests, while the paper experiments (tea-stained vellum, hand-torn edges, ghosts of embossing) flirt with their final form.

Somewhere between precise layout and accidental poetry, the studio hums. And yes, I am lying on the floor with a ruler and an existential crisis.

More soon, but for now, here’s a sun-dappled glimpse.

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https://stephenrussellbrett.com/

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