“If someone asked me what quality is most fundamental to Mary Bullington’s paintings and collages, I would say energy – that life riots through [her] work.” — Poet & novelist Marly Youmans

“Mary Bullington’s art . . . never ceases to fascinate . . . the colors draw the eye and the forms elicit the viewer to find new meaning with every observation, causing the question to be not “What do I see?” but “What do I see this time?” —Dr. Katherine Grimes, Professor of English; Chair of School of Business and Technology, Ferrum College

Artist’s Statement

No experience is wasted. Before I rented my first studio and became a fulltime artist 28 years ago, I studied to be a poet, and then a professor of medieval literature. These studies color both my art process and the art I create. Writing poetry taught me that I could begin with almost anything—a word, a sentence, or a series of marks on paper—and end up with not only a coherent thought, but ideas I didn’t know I had. My study of literature informs much of my figurative work. I prize the sense of a story unfolding as I animate a surface with people, plants, buildings, and animals. My “abstract” or non-objective art is about the visual drama: form, color, and pattern–including floral shapes–coming together to create visual theater.

My visual vocabulary combines eclectic sources–the art of antiquity, Modern and Post-Modern painting, medieval illumination and sculpture, and African and Aboriginal painting and masks—. My paintings and collages draw on memory, subconscious imagery, and physical rhythms. Re-envisioning and revising are a huge part of my creative process. I begin with bits and pieces—a palette that evolves as I paint, a song in my head becomes a series of bold brushstrokes or scribbled scripts cut up to map a new world.

As I work, I rely largely on the physicality of painting and drawing—and on chance. I wait on an inner voice and begin to make up little games: Make a deep magenta undulation here, rust-green there, draw five black squiggles–or sixteen faces, two in profile, pick a handful of painted scraps and glue down three, etc. As I play, I watch a formal structure evolve, humming with latent harmonies and dashes of percussion.

At the end of the day, if all I have is what I expected, I know I haven’t gone far enough.