The pen and the palette
Continually fight;
Says the pen to the palette,
“I know I’m write!”
—Myna A. Russell
Myna Ayers Russell (1884–1975) was a twentieth century artist and poet with an incredible body of work. She came to west in 1920 and settled in Salem, Oregon. Russell was a still life painter who worked in a variety of mediums. During her lifetime she produced at least four hundred paintings in a vibrant Impressionist style with subjects ranging from Arts and Crafts pottery to beautiful florals and other compositions that reflected her love of the outdoors.
While she was most widely-known in art world, Russell also had a poetic legacy of more than three hundred poems. An exciting recent discovery uncovered a cache of poems compiled here for the first time in the collection, Sounds at Midnight and Other Poems.