The work is influenced by a fluctuating stream: visions when half-asleep of gorgeous colors in and among textile patterns, nightmares of lost friends and family members, the zeitgeist, the sound of the rivers in our town, decades of my photographs, memories of mom working long hours, oblivious to all else, in her ceramics studio. Life is sometimes incoherent and absurd. Beauty is counterbalanced by spooky, sinister with boring, fun with forlorn. The dark side can reflect our shameful society today; our shocking willingness to beat down the vulnerable, while the lighter side evokes our chance, our hope shining forth, when time is taken to look more closely. There is a tension between the two that creates energy.
I spent my childhood making tiny clay animals in my mom’s studio, playing for hours in the woods, and fully immersed in imaginary characters I invented. Before painting, I was an editorial fashion photographer in NYC and London for 18 years, a rare woman in a very male-dominated field, trying to capture the female figure and attitude in the form of a narrative. I worked for Vogue, The London Sunday Times Magazine, and British Elle, among others. The story is usually fantastical and sometimes absurdist – a theme that I continue to explore in paint. The animals protect others in the artwork, like a charm or pact. They soften the strangeness that creeps into the juxtapositions. The participation of the beasts add goodness and loveliness. They are familiars; part of a person’s soul in animal form, but having their own agenda as well, undefined but potent. Allegorical and narrative, the paintings present heroines and animal-heroes balancing feelings of mystery or foreboding with a sense of celebration. They have some kind of task or important mission. The images are about the hardest part of the trip; the intersection between potential and conflict.
ARTIST RESIDENCIES AND GRANTS:
Hangar Art Research Center residency, Lisbon, Portugal, 2021
Oregon Arts Commission Grant, 2021
Chalk Hill Artist Residency, Sonoma CA, 2021
Brush Creek Artist Residency, WY, 2018
Kala Institute of the Arts, Berkeley, CA, 2018
Playa Summer Lake, OR, 2018
Djerassi Artists Program, Woodside, CA 2017
Ford Family Foundation Grant, 2017
Ringholtz Award, 2016
OPB Postcards From The Pandemic video on my artwork 2020
PBS’s OPB Oregon Art Beat article “Artist Paula Bullwinkel Takes on Donald Trump” October 2020
Exhibitions
SOLO
2021 Brouhaha, Transmission Gallery, Oakland, CA, July/August
2019 25% Americans Approved, Franklin Crossing Atrium, Bend, OR
2018 The Poet is a Thief of Fire, Franklin Crossing Atrium, Bend, OR
2015 Play It As It Lays, Bend Art Center / Atelier 6000, Bend, OR
2014 Hastings Cone Gallery, Vashon Island, WA
2011 Virginia Inn, Seattle, WA
2009 All the Fun, The Pines Gallery, Hood River, OR
2006 Gallery 3.5, Montclair State Univ., NJ
1997 Hudson Grill Gallery, New York, NY
GROUP select
2021 Roots, High Desert Museum, Bend OR
2021 San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild Summer Exhibition
2021 Solitude, Arc Gallery, Chicago, IL
2020 Gesture and Motion, Site:Brooklyn Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2020 A Generous Kingdom 4, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR
2019 Drawing, Site:Brooklyn Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Emerging, Arc Gallery, Chicago, IL
2019 Figuratively Speaking, At Liberty Arts Collective, Bend OR
2019 Artists’ Annual Show, Kala Gallery, Berkeley, CA
2019 Winter x Winter, Bend Art Center, Bend, OR
2018 Déjà vu, Bend Art Center, Bend, OR
2018 Chasing Ghosts III, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR
2018 Rise: Empower, Whitney Modern, Los Gatos, CA
2018 10th Annual Nat’l Juried Show, Prince Street Gallery, NYC
2018 Imprint, Salem Art Association, Salem, OR
2017 Spring Show, Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery, Portland OR
2017 HeArt of The Matter, Franklin Crossing, Bend
2017 Faculty Show, Pence Pinckney Gallery, COCC, Bend OR
2016 Fall Show, Portland Art Museum RSG, Portland, OR
2016 Ube Art, Berkeley, CA
2015 Monument for Bicyclists; A Day In Paradise, collaborative project in conjunction with Portland Art Museum, OR
2015 Faculty Show, Pence Pinckney Gallery, COCC, Bend OR
2014 Franklin Crossing, Figurative Painting, Bend, OR
2012 Beyond the Demos, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, Eugene, OR
Q&A The Bulletin (censored work), April 2019
Censorship, The Source Weekly April 2019
Exhibit review: The Bulletin April 2019
Bend Magazine Interview 2018
Cascades Arts and Entertainment Interview 2018
Review: Cosmo Ceramics, The Source, December 2017
Cascades Arts and Entertainment: Interview 2016
Political Art, group show 2017 Review