Albuquerque artist Russell Hamilton died Wednesday after a long battle with kidney disease. He was 64.
The co-founder of Exhibit 208 Gallery, Russell launched his career as a master printmaker at the Tamarind Institute. In 2009, Matrix Fine Art named him a “Local Treasure.”
He is survived by his wife Sharon and their son Eugene of Casper, Wyo.
Hamilton came to Albuquerque from the Springfield, Mo., area in 1976 after being one of two students accepted into Tamarind’s master printer program.
His high school class valedictorian, Hamilton won an engineering scholarship to the Rolla School of Mines in Rolla, Mo. He studied there for two years, but art flowed through his blood.
“Very much against his father’s wishes, he said, ‘I will not be an engineer,'” his wife Sharon said. “He wanted to follow his dream of being an artist.”
Hamilton transferred to Missouri State University, where he majored in art and met Sharon. They married in 1973.
In Albuquerque, he worked for Western Graphics, where he printed all of R.C. Gorman’s work, she said.
Although Hamilton began in abstraction, he turned to more representational art after coming to New Mexico.
“He took our son camping and fishing,” Sharon said. “He loved being outside and being in the mountains. He loved the light and would not go back to Missouri to live.”
His outdoor expeditions became fodder for his work.
“While most of us travel to escape necessary tasks, Russell used his forays into the hills as a means to get to work,” Journal visual arts critic Wesley Pulkka wrote in an email.
Hamilton turned those memories into “imaginative composite vignettes,” Pulkka added.
His work can be found in collections at the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Albuquerque Museum, and at local banks, as well as Chase Manhattan Bank, Denver; New York’s Chemical Bank; Chicago’s Fidelity Mutual Corp.; the Prudential Insurance Co. in New Jersey; Intel Corp.; Mobil Oil Corp.; Mount Sinai Hospital; Phelps-Dodge Corp.; and at Los Angeles’ Security Pacific Bank.
Hamilton endured three kidney transplants, the second from his wife. His health deteriorated when doctors discovered a tumor on his single original kidney. He spent his final year framing about 100 original prints and drawings.
“He said the way he got through everything was to just push through,” Sharon said. “He was the most optimistic person and full of faith. He never complained.”