“Whatever you're going to do, do it,” she said.
“Someone gave me that advice, and I had no idea what that meant, but it stayed with me.
“And I totally understand what it means now.”
An artist "first and foremost", Ms Russi has worked in her studio practice for more than 40 years.
She is also the manager for Kaiela Arts, and worked for four years at Shepparton Art Gallery in the field of education and public programs.
“In 2009 I was offered a short-term 12 month contract with gallery Kaiela to assist it to become an independent entity,” Ms Russi said.
“Then I was asked to stay on as a manager to help it get started until more staff could be found.
“That's 11 years ago — and I'm still there.”
Ms Russi said the arts had always been her greatest passion.
“I think that is what makes us human, really, our sense of creativity and community,” she said.
“For Kaiela arts, our brand tagline is connecting through culture and telling Aboriginal stories, and that's very much close to my heart.
“Shepparton, as we know, is a great melting pot. It has lots of stories to tell, different stories, and art is really about telling stories one way or another . . . you get under the skin of the place.”
Growing up with a traditional Italian father, yet with a mother who had an education and a career, Ms Russi was torn between two worlds.
“I grew up with both of those things in my life,” she said.
“And the only time being a woman felt like a disadvantage was when I was a teenager and girls were not meant to — according to traditional Italian fathers — go out and needed to have the skills to get married.
“But I can be pretty stubborn, I've never let being a woman stop me from doing anything I want to do.”
Times may have changed since Ms Russi was a child.
In the art world, though, she said creeping gender inequality was still rife.
“If you look at what people would term the famous or the well known artists, they're mostly men,” she said.
“When you're talking about the arts, there's a lot of great women in all areas — writers, musicians, painters, sculptors — the works — who didn't ever and haven't ever had the recognition their male counterparts do.
“I think it's been recognised in the last century — women actually have a lot to say . . . and a different view, a different palette, to speak with.”
Despite gradual steps in the right direction, Ms Russi still believes days like International Women's Day are crucial, "to acknowledge what's gone before us".
“I think it's really important for young women to understand the history of what's been done on their behalf, so that they now have the freedom and the choices that they have and perhaps take for granted,” she said.
“When we can be blind to someone's gender and they are able to accomplish something on their merits — not because they're a man or a woman — then I think that we have achieved some sort of proper humanity.
“But we're not there yet.”
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