David L. Bullis

May 24 - July 10, 2023

Jeremy K. Bullis is proud to present the first solo exhibition of his father’s paintings.

Jeremy has this to say about his father and the exhibition, “The title ‘Looking Up’ references many things.  A number of the paintings exhibited here are of sunsets and sky.  David loved flight and pursued it in many different ways.  As a person he might sometimes seem pessimistic, however optimism and light shine through his paintings.   And there is the unavoidable fact … David was short.  He looked up at almost everything.

“This body of work, created from 2004-2010, is searching for something.  A kind of perfection that only the artist doing the creating can see as they try to translate something tangible, like a winter’s sunrise, into an abstract painting.  Dad’s subject, the sky, is endless.  Beyond the sky … beyond the horizon and clouds and our planet’s atmosphere there is Space.  Endless space.  He thought about what was Out There constantly.  When he looked up at the clouds he also looked beyond them, far past anything he could see.  David’s awareness of a Great Depth is in his paintings … the finely drizzled lines and smears are layered upon one another until they are too numerous to count and together they form a profound field of emotion.”

About the Artist

David Bullis  lived in North Benton, Ohio.  From the beginning he was an outsider with a dark sense of humor, a curiosity that rural Ohio could not satisfy, and a need to create.  When graduating high school he was told by his father that he could not be an artist.  That, “Making art is not a job.”  David’s response was to join the Navy and see the world.  He became a fighter jet mechanic on an aircraft carrier and toured the Asian Seas.  After the Navy he spent the late 60’s exploring the North and South Western United States, experimenting with painting, making sand candles, and racing cars.  Eventually he returned to Ohio, got married and raised a family.  He had a large workshop/studio where he spent the large majority of his free time creating and building things.  Not satisfied with just fitting in the time to create art, he took early retirement and devoted the last 15 years of his life to doing what he wanted to do - paint, sculpt, carve, build, and write.  He accepted death knowing that he had made the most out of life and that he had created as much as he was able to.