Deborah Russell was born in the Western Districts of Victoria and today lives and works on the outskirts of Melbourne. Having studied printmaking at RMIT (Melbourne, Victoria), the artist went on to work as an illustrator for magazines cherished in Paris and London. Following her return to Australia in the 1980’s, Russell began creating street-side murals while substantiating a studio practice. Today her works have been included in innumerable solo and group presentations and are held by revered collections – the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and the I.B.M Collection (Perth) among many others.
"Natural history has been the central preoccupation of Deborah Russell’s art since the early 1980s. Acknowledging a contradiction in her preferences for English gardens and love of the Australian bush, her 1980s paintings subverted European genres of still life and landscape. Vaguely surrealist in intent, they also revived a traditionally feminine aesthetic, recalling the flower paintings of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe.” Helen McDonald, The Age.