Born in Del Rey, California, Shirley Russell, an impressionist landscape painter, studied art at Stanford University, the California School of Fine Art, the California School of Arts and Crafts, and Academie Julian in Paris, 1937 to 1938. In 1921, she went to Hawaii and returned there in 1923 to settle permanently. She taught art in a Honolulu high school and painted regularly, doing scenes of urban and rural landscapes, often suggestive of human activity. She also painted portrait subjects. She was a member of the Association of Honolulu artists and as a teacher was widely influential on a succeeding generation of local artists.