About the artist:

Fran Bull's art has been shown worldwide for over 25 years. Art critic Alice Thorson wrote in 1993, in a review of Bull's solo show at the Morgan Gallery in Kansas City: "Partial to exploding, amorphous forms, labyrinthine layerings and iridescent colors, Fran Bull's aesthetic overwhelms." Kansas City Star, Nov. 5, 1993 Bull's life was inspired and defined by her childhood study of art at the Newark Museum, Newark New Jersey. She went on to study painting at Bennington College with Paul Feeley, and in 1980 she earned an M.A. degree from New York University in Art and Art Education. Upon graduation from Bennington in 1960, Bull embarked upon a professional life in art. Her early work was influenced by artist Malcolm Morley and by the Pop spirit of Photo-Realism. It was shown and sold through the Louis K. Meisel Gallery. Bull's affiliation with Meisel continued until 1986. Recognizing the limitations of Photo-Realism, Bull was compelled to find a personal voice. On a solitary retreat to rural Ireland, she delved into the writings of Carl Jung and Jungian analyst Marion Woodman. BullÕs affinity for the Jungian literature would come to exert a profound influence on her art. As a Photo-Realist Bull had addressed an established reality, one well known and shared. Now she was investigating the hidden treasure of the unconscious, the imagery of dreams. A large group of ink drawings emerged. In 1990 some of the drawings were chosen to illustrate Mordant Rhymes for Modern Times, a book of political satire by poet Ann Salwey, which won the American Institute of Graphic Arts design award, and is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. In her review in The Print Collectors Newsletter, Art Critic Nancy Princenthal wrote: "Bull's expressive ink drawings bleedÑmaybe hemorrhage is the better wordÑ across the tabloid-size page." Nancy Princenthal, PCN, 1992 In the mid 1990s Bull expanded her creative focus by exploring other media, and since that time her artistic output has included performance art, sculpture, mixed media, printmaking and set design, as well as painting. She has been especially prolific in the area of printmaking, creating numerous bodies of work over the past four years. Bull works in collaboration with master printer Virgili Barbara in Taller 46, a printmaking studio in Barcelona, Spain where Picasso, Tapies, Miro, Saura and others worked before her. In 2003 Bull exhibited her painting series The Magdalene Cycle at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. Art critic Marc Awodey wrote: "The paintings in Fran BullÕs "'Magdalene Cycle'" at the Amy E. Tarrant Gallery comprise a fierce and meaty group of neo-abstract expressionist canvasesÉBullÕs paintings are firmly rooted in art history, and her extensive use of red is particularly powerful. She has taken away the patriarchal view of MagdaleneÕs red as a scarlet letter and turned it into a red badge of courage." Marc Awodey, Seven Days, October 2003 Bull recently received an award from the Printmaking Council of New Jersey for her etching Four and Twenty Blackbirds, and was honored with a solo exhibition. Her etching series Barcelona won her the position of featured artist in the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Artist Gallery, www.JerseyArts.com. Today Bull's art may be seen as an expressionist exploration, one that seeks to connect the mundane and quotidian to larger mythic and historical motifs, themes and narratives. Fran Bull lives and works in Brandon, Vermont. She also maintains a studio in Closter, New Jersey. I want to give expression to very deep intimations about the world of forms and presences. This entails a kind of physics, highly theoretical, but eminently experiential. I portray not a shell, for example, but the forces giving rise to that form. I look for the dream of the shell inside the dreamer's head - Fran Bull