Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is honored to present two solo exhibits, Paul Bowen: Woodlark, sculpture fashioned from scavenged seaside material, along with his works on paper, and Space: an odyssey, featuring artist Fran Bull’s acrylic paintings inspired by cosmic imagery from the James Webb space telescope. 

Through her art practice, Fran Bull reflects upon contemporary events and themes. “My abstract art has always borne a relationship to photographic images coming to us from Outer Space. The process whereby I make this work is the cause. Something about setting into motion paint of varying viscosities and colors, is aligned with how gasses and stars interact in space.” The artist “sets her paint into motion,” adding and painting over, circling, drawing and highlighting until “(sometimes) you’ll see very recognizable images because they were somehow there and I coaxed them from nebulous fields of color. “

“My abstract art has always borne a relationship to photographic images coming to us from Outer Space. The process whereby I make this work is the cause. Something about setting into motion paint of varying viscosities and colors, is aligned with how gasses and stars interact in space.

I allow paint to range freely on the canvas, the colors colliding and fusing. New colors appear. Now I have a starting point for creating cohesive compositions. A conversation begins, back and forth, between the accidental and the intentional. Whereas Pollock created an arena for the accidental, I go a next step. I enter the fray as a conscious force. To keep this conversation fresh, I take little turns to the right and to the left, in order to modify the process and arrive at variations. Sometimes you’ll see very recognizable images because they were somehow there and I coaxed them from nebulous fields of color. Intuition and a sense of play guide my brush.

My approach to these paintings began many years ago, when I moved away from Photorealism and the New York art world. They evolved very naturally, culminating in a series of 13 works entitled “13 Moons of the Magdalene”. These were large format abstract paintings that were inspired by a Feminist version of the story of Mary Magdalene. I imagined the Magdalene as a sort of inchoate energy that was in a process of emerging into form—like gasses becoming stars, you could say. My thought was to try to paint things not yet seen, not yet formed: things coming into being.

Now, I am inspired by what we are seeing and learning from the James Webb Space Telescope. Apparently, our theories of cosmology and the origins of the universe, are being upended by data coming to us from this marvelous new instrument. As a very amateur physicist (I could never grok the math), I have my own theories. These involve ideas of timeless time and space as infinite, shaped like a three-dimensional spiral. Some of the data coming back to us from the JWST align with my theories. But that’s another conversation!

In these paintings, I celebrate the universe, our home, blazing with beauty and mystery.”

~ Fran Bull
March 21, 2024
Brandon, VT

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Fran Bull’s Artist Talk at Mitchell•Giddings Fine Arts on the evening of September 30, 2023