Russell Miyaki

TRUMBULL, CT
JOINED: November, 2022

My Website

“Art is the extroverted balance of my reclusive characteristics. It’s my visual way to connect to the world and talk to myself. But at the same time, I have an enormous empathy for other people’s lives and feelings so much that I am 100% fulfilled if I connect someone’s life to a joyful, positive moment through my work.”

My name is Russell Miyaki. I am a contemporary artist and creative director in New York city, and an artist at Metro Art Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I am a 3rd generation Japanese American born and raised in New Mexico. Went to school in Colorado graduating with honors, and majoring in advertising design and illustration. I am inspired by many artists from all centuries like William De Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Marc, Juan Gris and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Like a lot of people, I needed to escape the negative energy, the anger, and unhappiness going on in the world and focus on positivity, happiness, and finding common ground. So I gravitated to the most simplest expressions and feelings of positive energy, happiness and fun. It’s not enough to say that I enjoy art. Art is the extroverted balance of my reclusive characteristics. It’s my visual way to connect to the world and talk to myself. But at the same time, I have an enormous empathy for other people’s lives and feelings so much that I am 100% fulfilled if I connect someone’s life to a joyful, positive moment through my work.

Examples of My Work

Music

 Played drums at age 5 in a Polynesian night club

Virtual Worlds

Was interviewed on CBS as an avatar in Second Life

Skiing

First in my skiing class of 50 to fall flat on my face

Sports

Threw a pass to Jerry Rice of the 49ers on a treadmill

Travel

Got lost in the Bahamas on a very small scooter

What do you wish you could tell your younger artist self?

Sometimes it’s just as important what you don’t paint as it is what you do paint. Spontaneity is power. Don’t connect all the dots. Allow your audience to do that.

How do you get over creative blocks?

Story telling is what we do as artists. We tell many types of stories. But sometimes we run into artist’s version of writer’s block. Story themes may dry up, or has been done to death. Going straight to the canvas and just start painting is great, but as we know, words mean things. And often times, those words inspire ideas. Research has uncovered that our brains constantly search for familiar patterns. Take for example the Rorschach ink blot test. Where a psychologist holds up a series of different organic ink blots in which the participant interprets what they see. I bring this up because often times when we try to create interesting compositions, designs and abstractions in our work, we run into some repetitive designs and structures. We may also find the composition is flat and predictive. Especially when we start with the deadly blank canvas. I walk away from the studio and do several things that inspire different thoughts and perspectives. I look at shadows and reflections and isolate them into different compositions. I tear through magazine pages and articles and take a marker and randomly mark out words so that the story completely changes. I force things that don’t belong together into new combinations.

If you could have a dinner party with your favorite artists (living or deceased), who would you invite and why?

I would have Basquiat and Chagall because I would be fascinated in the type of conversations that would happen between the two different generations of art, as well as the different approaches they have.
MEET MORE OF OUR ARTISTS
All Time Views 194Views Today 3