He was raised on a family farm in Saskatchewan where his parents recognized and nurtured his artistic talent at an early age. He began his professional career as a commissioned portrait painter in 1982, but it was a “providential twist of fate” that guided him to sculpting. In 1985 he was commissioned by a prominent Saskatoon businesswoman to create a sculpture for her son’s Albertan resort. This led to his pursuit of a BFA from the University of Saskatchewan, where he was awarded the University Medal in Fine Arts in 1992.

As I discovered during a fascinating conversation with him, Baron is uniquely qualified to translate the inexpressible yearnings of his professional clients into inspirational figures that exceed their expectations. He is a natural scholar of the human spirit. Partly as the result of his apprenticeship as a Chaplain at Assumption University in Windsor, he commenced work on a Master of Divinity at University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto in 1994. His study of theology informs his art and leaves him ideally suited to collaborate with clients seeking religious and spiritual works

Theology also led him back to his true nature — an inveterate explorer of the underlying unity within all life diversity. His prairie roots nurtured an abiding love of nature that he says “… was a profound spiritual experience of attunement to the rhythms and cycles of life… In a world with so many ‘isms’, if we could only recognize sameness as clearly as we see differences.”

An Extraordinary Aesthetic

In my experience all artists share a common quest to discover and celebrate the unusual in the ordinary. Looking through his portfolio of commissioned works, Russell Baron provided me with a shocking example of his finely tuned ability to do exactly that. In 1995 Baron was commissioned to create a pair of bronze handles for large glass doors being installed at Shepherd of the Hills Catholic Parish in Eden, Wisconsin. His interpretation resulted in a pair of finely-wrought bronze angels, seemingly suspended in mid-air. Russell credits local bronze sculptor Dale Dunning with inventing the brilliant solution to the concealed mounting problem — a reverse-threaded shaft that allows the angels to be tightened to the glass with no visual interference.

But the shock was deciphering the origin of his angelic design. On the facing page in his portfolio was a photograph of a dead bird on the ground. The rhythms of movement in the angels he rendered correspond to the dynamic lines in the gesture of the bird’s death. Somehow Baron had recognized the transcendent beauty of the corpse as he passed it on the street, and transformed it into a liturgical element familiar to everyone who enters the doors of the Church.

“I respect tradition; I don’t replicate it,” he explains, as he guides me through photographs of the stunning religious and mythical sculptures he has installed in churches and chapels and monasteries. But like the Great Masters, part of his training has involved exactly that. His striking likeness of Michelangelo’s “David” startles you into full attentiveness as you drive up the laneway to his home studio on a farm near Almonte. With his partner, Russell is painstakingly restoring their house, built in 1881, to evoke a sense of the original period. It is clear already that the result will probably exceed even Russell’s initial expectations. “My parents raised me with the belief that nothing is impossible. Sometimes it just takes a while.”

Baron is skilled in the use of multi-media art forms as an educational tool to encourage group interaction. He has led seminars and workshops in Toronto and Ottawa, exploring themes in art, spirituality, sexuality and mysticism.

Photographs of Russell Baron’s bronze and terra cotta figures, and other commissioned pieces, will soon be available on his website. He can also be reached by email.