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Pete Russom

Professor of Art

My love of teaching and painting has linked my life with SUNY Plattsburgh for twenty years. I received my undergraduate degree from the studio art program at SUNY Plattsburgh in 1985. Prepared by those intensive four years of study, I entered graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After obtaining the M.F.A. degree, I lived and taught in New York City for five years.

In 1994, nearly ten years following my graduation from SUNY Plattsburgh, I accepted an opportunity to return here to teach drawing and painting. This wonderful and unique place has had a profound impact on every facet of my personal and professional life. I was raised in a small railroad town, where life centered around family and work. The two contrasting worlds of industry and agriculture dominated the landscape. My visual vocabulary was shaped by these surroundings and has remained a very significant concern in my art today.

I work directly from the landscape in my drawings and watercolors; these pieces also function as research material for larger, more complex acrylic paintings. My most recent works are a synthesis of images, forms, and geometric systems suspended in fields of color. The structure and relationship between the various formal elements act on the viewer's eye and initiate my communication with the viewer.

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