Nat Russell stands before a mural he painted at Big Car Gallery. (Michelle Pemberton / Indianapolis Star)

A drawing by Indianapolis native Nat Russell, whose exhibit, "Thing" is at Big Car Gallery through the end of the month. See Russell perform music at Big Car April 12. (Michelle Pemberton / Indianapolis Star)

Careful, there: Nat Russell is dealing with elemental things.

His black-and-white images on the walls at Big Car Gallery trade on myth, creation, death, life.

Maybe. You decide.

"I like the subject matter stripped down to the barest things," Russell said last week at Big Car. "To me, this isn't about a fight with my girlfriend, or how I relate to a dog, or something. It's more like thinking about what people were thinking about 500 years ago."

The Indianapolis native, now based in Oakland, Calif., is all about hulking forces, from Druidic stone structures to monoliths surrounded by angry chimps. Dealing in something that immense, he said, is being part of a visual tradition.

Russell's new works pass completely on color, and they're kinetic for it. He has eschewed faces in this collection, too, having recently decided that their features had become distracting.

The result is a focused and distinct body of work by a 32-year-old artist who grew up in Greenwood, got a BFA at Ball State University and kicked around Indy waiting tables and working at Luna before moving to Berkeley six years ago.

He pays the bills there doing layout and design for a CD re-issue company, occasionally working for such magazines as Dwell, and making T-shirts. He has no aversion to commercial art, but still reveres the conceptual.

In a corner on the walls of Big Car sit photographs -- stills from a movie yet to be made, or maybe one that's already been made. A portfolio of poster-sized prints occupies one wall. They were originally minor sketches, rough ideas of things to come. But blown up and silk-screened, they become complete in and of themselves. They're rough, unpolished, and he likes them that way. It seems almost dishonest to him to labor too much.

"I just really enjoy the rawness of drawing," he said, dark-brown eyes bulging, one eyebrow rising after the other.

There's a definite sense that Russell focuses on deconstructing the images in his head to understand why he is drawn to them and what they mean.

There is an iconography to the work. Beautifully rendered fingers look like twisted rope. A big black hat -- a pilgrim's or maybe a cowboy's -- is a malevolent force. But a recurring giant black star, or sun, or maybe supernova, stands out most.

"I guess it's just thinking in broader terms, rather than dealing with the specifics in my life -- 'Why I am so bummed out?' or 'Why am I so happy?'" he said. "It's 'Why am I here on this Earth in the universe?' We forget that it's an amazing thing. We get so caught up in driving a car, watching TV or reading a book, we forget that we're these ridiculous creatures walking around. We try to create some sort of order, but there's such a bigger thing at play."