Gallery Highlights

SEASON OF BONES

2008 ~ copperplate and mixed media etching

The inspiration and starting point for this series was a photograph of two excavated skeletons, found by archaeologists in Valdaro, Italy. Their bones were locked in an embrace, their legs and arms were piled together like sticks, their heads, now skulls, were turned towards each other, suggesting poignantly, they’d died gazing into each other’s eyes.

BARCELONA!

2001 ~ carborundum etched plexiglass

Toda la vida es grabado.  

Fissures in sidewalks, cracks in walls, fingerprints, bricks marked by rain, rust, lines on human faces, the texture of cloth, veins in leaves, peeling paint, ocean shaping the line of the shore, strata in rock, tire marks, genes, footprints on sand, shoeprints on asphalt, crevasses, Pompeii, Nasca lines, Lascaux cave, the astronomical carving at Newgrange, ancient petroglyphs, a photograph, fossils, human memory
– the list like a song by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

All of life is etching.

SUITE: SWEET

2001 ~ copperplate etching

In this group of copperplate etchings, I explore the language of human gesture. I speculate on the meaning of arms touching, embracing, reaching, enfolding. I delve into the secrets revealed in the juxtaposition of human figures.

I began a decade ago making paintings whose surfaces were raised like topographical maps. I was using Venetian plaster, a very lovely material introduced to me by my friend Robin Carter, a master of the art of interior walls and faux finishes. The work evolved over time from being somewhat abstract to overtly figurative (see STATIONS). I think of these as “sculptural paintings”. The figures jut from the canvas as much as 35 inches, but the art can hang on the wall. Next, using the same processes and materials, my figures left the canvas and are now freestanding. This work occupies me in the studio currently and I am calling the series, FOOLS, a quote from Shakespeare: What fools these mortals be.

– Fran Bull

I hope we never stop painting, never succumb to those who say, Painting is dead. Those of us who love to paint have an intimate relationship with color and form and the matter of it, the substance itself—sometimes liquid and flowing, sometimes thick and resistant. We relish plasticity—the fact that paint will bend to our ideas and thoughts, will even give back with surprises and beautiful improvisations beyond what we’d imagined. I love holding a brush in my hand, loaded with a color, ready to spread on a canvas, feeling just out of control and a little nervous.

– Fran Bull

DARK MATTER

2007 ~ mixed media on canvas

Ours is a universe, according to cosmologists, that contains and conceals the massive presence of a mystery called Dark Matter.

We are told that dark matter has vastly more mass than the “visible” component of the universe. This intriguing presence/absence, with all of its fertile implications and metaphorical possibilities, inspired the title of this series of works on canvas.

LUX AETERNA

1991 ~ acrylic on paper

This work is an attempt to picture the unseen: felt energies; cell structures; sub-atomic presences; implosions, fissions. Its appearance is abstract, yet, for me, it represents aspects of the real. On some fundamental plane, art and science converge; feeling and mater enter into fusion.

I think of Installations as distinct from exhibitions. Exhibitions of art can be formal affairs whereas installations require the art to be displayed dynamically, invading and carving space expressively. There is even a challenge to arrange installations so as to “choreograph” the movements of spectators within such spaces, to have the arrangement influence how viewers move through and experience the art. There is a distinct theatrical element to installations and a call to viewers to “confront” and interact with the art rather than to regard it dispassionately.

– Fran Bull

In Flanders Fields
Chaffee Art Center Exhibition

Rutland, VT
2015

More installations can be found here: In Flanders Fields Exhibitions.

I could be persuaded to say, even if exaggerating, that all of the work I have done on paper, including printmaking, has been an excuse to interact with paper, itself. Paper is gorgeous stuff that is as varied in its qualities as the leaves, wood, rags and other sundry materials from which it is made. Paper welcomes and receives, it provides a ground for drawings and prints, subtly influencing all it “hosts”.

– Fran Bull