Russ Warren is an American figurative painter and printmaker. He was born in Washington, DC in 1951, grew up in Houston, Texas, and began his training as an artist at the University of St. Thomas, Houston in 1969. He received his BFA in 1973 from the University of New Mexico and received his MFA in 1977 from the University of Texas in San Antonio. Warren taught painting and printmaking at Davidson College from 1978 to 2008 and exhibited widely throughout the state of North Carolina in these years while also showing throughout the US and abroad in such prestigious exhibitions as the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. Hodges Taylor Gallery represented him in Charlotte and Phyllis Kind Gallery represented him in New York and Chicago. He showed at the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, SECCA, the Hickory Museum of Art, the Knight Gallery and many more North Carolina venues. Warren's artistic inspirations include Spanish masters such as Velázquez, Goya and Picasso, as well as Mexican folk art and contemporary artists such as Roy de Forest and Jim Nutt. He melds these inspirations into his own unique synthesis of symbols and imagery, employing line and color as well as wild variations in scale and shadow to heighten the expression, and often the humor.