USSR Union of Artists
Kush was born in 1965 in Moscow, Russia. After studying at the Surikov Moscow Art Institute, he was conscripted into the Soviet Army for two years where he was assigned to paint murals. In 1987, he began exhibiting with the USSR Union of Artists but earned a living drawing portraits on the streets of Moscow and caricatures for a newspaper. In 1990, following his first foreign exhibition in Germany with two other Russian artists, he emigrated to the United States, initially living in Los Angeles before moving to Hawaii where he also worked as a mural painter for the Whaler's Village Museum on Maui. While based in Hawaii, his works received several exhibitions in Hong Kong galleries. Gallery shows followed in Seattle, Pittsburgh, and other American cities, and he eventually opened his own gallery, Kush Fine Art in Lahaina, Hawaii.