Painting intuitively, Los Angeles-based artist Lucy Pull creates synesthetic canvases filled with shapes and layers of paint that prompt personal interpretations.
Read MoreBorn and raised in New York, Lucy Bull holds a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2012). The artist has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2014.
The dynamic explosions of colour in Lucy Bull's paintings are made by stamping, mark-making and mark-making, varying between the focused and broad application of paint with her brush. Each painting accumulates multiple layers of paint, some as little as four and others as many as twenty.
Though seemingly abstract, recognisable forms start to emerge in Bull's paintings. As the artist told W Magazine in 2021, she paints 'representational pictures of emotional situations' while preferring to leave the interpretations open. Bull's pursuit of the unconscious has often led her to be compared to the Surrealists.
In Skunk Grove (2021), Bull's solo exhibition at Los Angeles' David Kordansky Gallery, recent paintings were arranged on the wall to provide an intimate conversation with the viewer. 5:00, for example, a horizontal canvas depicting mountainous terrains in yellow, dark grey, and red, was flanked by two dominantly green paintings—Evening Switch and Liquid Rubies—that created a sense of depth and a contemplative atmosphere through the colours (all works 2021).
In 2017, Bull published the artist's book Plume, which features 67 original paintings. That year, she also established the table-top exhibition space From the Desk of Lucy Bull, where she organises exhibitions, performances, and gatherings.
Selected solo and two-person exhibitions include Skunk Grove, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Squall, Smart Objects, Los Angeles (2019); Queens Way, Mother Culture, Long Beach (2017).
Selected group exhibitions include I Want to Eat the Sunset. We're Talking About the Cosmos, Even. And Love, I Guess?, Almine Rech, New York (2020); Worms Brains, AWHRHWAR, Los Angeles (2018).
Lucy Bull's website can be found here.
Leila Sajjadi | Ocula | 2021
