Chris Bull

Profile

City: Lane Cove
Country: Australia

Joined: Jul 2009

I’ve been scribbling and drawing ever since I could hold a pencil or crayon. It’s a compulsion that’s driven me and shaped my entire life. I studied drawing, painting and design at the National Art School, but I consider myself largely self taught with observation being my main teacher.

The compulsion to draw led to a forty year career as a Designer and Art Director. One of my early influences was Tony McGillick who I worked with in the late sixties. Tony was a founding partner of Central Street Gallery in Sydney. The Gallery brought many leading international painters to Australia and I was heavily influenced by the impact of these large colourful hard edged works. Today, the bright colours of the Fauves, the loose shapes of Matisse and Dufy and the line and distortion of Whitely are my main influences.

Travelling has been an integral part of my life since the early seventies when I spent two years working in London and subsequently explored France, Spain and Italy before travelling overland back to Australia via Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Since then there have been return trips to South Asia, South East Asia, Southern Europe and North Africa. However over the last twenty years the Australian Outback has been my big love. It’s been a great inspiration and still remains my favourite destination.

I’ve worked in most mediums including photography and computer based art, but my real passion lies with water based mediums. I like watching the paint run and mix with other colours and then scratching about with a pen, pencil or even the back of a brush to get an interesting line. I love the lively look and feel of the line floating amongst splashes of bright paint.