Landmark Exhibition Celebrates the Life, Work and Enduring Legacy of One of
Rockport’s Most Influential Artists
ROCKPORT, Texas — Rockport Center for the Arts will celebrate the extraordinary life, work and legacy of Rockport native Steve Russell with Steve Russell: Beyond the Brush, on view October 3 through November 22, 2026, in the H-E-B Gallery. A public reception honoring Russell will be held Saturday, October 10, from 5–7 p.m.
For Rockport Center for the Arts, this exhibition is more than a presentation of work by one of the community’s most respected artists. It is an opportunity to honor a man whose life has been intertwined with the story of art in Rockport for decades.
Russell, who turns 80 this year, was born in Rockport in 1946 and grew up along the waterfront, sailing and fishing with his family. He began attempting to capture the romantic coastal scenes around him in paint at approximately 14 years old. Those early efforts led him to artist Kit Dinger, who introduced the young Russell to the fundamentals of drawing and painting through charcoal, pastel and eventually oil.
What followed was a lifetime devoted to making art.
Russell studied art at Del Mar College before serving in the U.S. Navy as a Corpsman attached to the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. While stationed in San Diego, he studied with noted watercolorists Frederick Whitaker and Robert Landry and became acquainted with artists in Southern California. After returning to the United States following a period painting in Mexico, Russell came home to Rockport and studied with William Brigl, whom Russell describes as his mentor and who helped him further develop his abilities as a marine and landscape painter.
Over the ensuing decades, Russell developed an unmistakably personal body of work grounded in the places he knows intimately. His paintings have chronicled Texas from the Hill Country to the Gulf Coast, finding beauty in everything from spring landscapes to weathered boats, leaning bait stands and the marshes at day’s end. His process often begins not with realism but with abstraction—searching first for the shapes, movement and visual relationships that will ultimately guide a painting toward impressionism and realism.
In Russell’s own words, “I paint to live and I live to paint.”
That devotion to art extends well beyond painting. Throughout his life, Russell has worked across media including sculpture, jewelry, textiles, glass and metal. He has built a hot-glass shop and smith shop, created works from salvaged copper and bronze, constructed boats with his family, and, more recently, explored spinning, weaving, knitting and crochet. Beyond the Brush reflects the restless curiosity of an artist for whom creativity has never been confined to a single medium.
Yet Russell’s importance to Rockport extends far beyond the work he has made.
A founding member of the Rockport Art Association, Inc., Russell belongs to the generation of artists whose commitment helped establish the arts community that ultimately grew into today’s Rockport Center for the Arts. In 1994, he was named the Rockport Art Festival Master Artist, an honor recognizing both artistic achievement and meaningful contributions to Rockport’s arts community.
Nearly six decades after the first Rockport Art Festival, the organization Russell helped build now has the privilege of welcoming his work home for an exhibition in its H-E-B Gallery.
“Steve Russell's creativity is magnetic,” says Rockport Center for the Arts’ Catey Arnold, Barrow Foundation Curator of Exhibitions. "A landmark exhibition of 60+ new oil paintings shines light on the vitality within and mastery of this man's practice. RCA is privileged to present Beyond the Brush in the HEB Gallery this fall."
Russell’s career has taken his work and his easel far beyond Rockport. He has painted throughout the United States as well as Mexico, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. Among his honors, he has twice been named Texas State Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year, has been recognized multiple times as Central Flyway Artist, and has appeared as a guest artist at the Easton Waterfowl Festival and Northwest Rendezvous.
But Rockport has remained home.
It is the place where Russell first learned to see the world as an artist, the landscape he has returned to throughout his career, and the community in which his influence can still be felt.
In reflecting on his life, Russell describes it as a voyage through remarkable people and places, marked by both hardship and beauty. That journey—and his lifelong determination to create—lies at the heart of Beyond the Brush.
For Rockport Center for the Arts, presenting this exhibition is both a celebration and an expression of profound gratitude: to an artist who painted Rockport, helped shape its artistic identity and, through his work and service, helped make possible the arts community that thrives here today.
Steve Russell: Beyond the Brush will be on view October 3–November 22, 2026, in the H-E-B Gallery at Rockport Center for the Arts, 204 S. Austin St. in Rockport. The public reception honoring Russell will be held Saturday, October 10, from 5–7 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.
About Rockport Center for the Arts
The 1.2-acre Rockport Center for the Arts campus is located in the Rockport Cultural Arts District and features multiple galleries, classrooms, a sculpture garden, and The ROCC conference center. RCA is dedicated to supporting the arts through exhibitions, education, outreach, and community engagement. Admission to the galleries is always free. For more information, visit rockportartcenter.com or call (361) 729-5519.
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