The Magdalen Cycle - God's Wife Painting

I want to give expression to very deep intimations about the world of manifest things. 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 dreamers head...
-- Fran Bull

Fran Bulls art has been shown worldwide for over 25 years. Art critic Alice Thorson wrote in 1993, in a review of Bulls solo show at the Morgan Gallery in Kansas City:

Partial to exploding, amorphous forms, labyrinthine layerings and iridescent colors, Fran Bulls aesthetic overwhelms.
-- Kansas City Star, Nov. 5, 1993

Bulls 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. In 1969 Bull married Photo-Realist painter Malcolm Morley. Morley was at the height of his career, and it was during their relationship that Bull learned his methods and approach to painting.

Morley and Bull separated in 1972, and Bull embarked upon a professional life in art. Her early works were influenced by Morley and by the Pop spirit of Photo-Realism. Theywere shown and sold through the Louis K. Meisel Gallery. Bulls affiliation with Meisel continued until 1986, when she decided to challenge her own aesthetic.

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. Bulls 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:

Bulls expressive ink drawings bleedmaybe hemorrhage is the better wordacross the tabloid-size page.