BIOGRAPHY

 

John Cullen

ARTIST STATEMENT

Like moth to flame, I am drawn to all things religious and spiritual,

to the sacred, and to its profane shadow. This compulsion to invest

our spiritual and soulful longings into matter, into signage, symbol

and icon; this continues to amaze me. And this takes me into archetypal

realms, into animism, alchemy, shamanism, santeria, ancestor worship,

into mythologies great and small. As in a steeplechase, I must stop at

every street shrine, knock at the door of every peaked roof, and listen

intently to the pronouncements of stones gathered in great circles. The

task seems to be to trace and rework this primary material in a manner

which somehow resonates personal and collective authenticity. The task

is endless. Fortunately the trickster appears from time to time to bless me

with his humor, to help take the sting out of all this high-minded

seriousness.

 

The assemblage pieces work with darkness. They try to match up personal

and cultural shadows with found and arranged details, flotsam, jetsam.

These works represent an attempt to articulate the artist's role as mirror

and seer. As a therapist, I sometimes work with victims of child abuse,

neglect and abandonment, and these experiences seek visibility

- a visual wail, lament, dirge.

 

And then there is the respite of old armchair abstraction: emulating

and arguing with past masters; restroking the tribal history of mark making;

time travel in the netherspheres of color, light, volume, pictorial form,

the unrepentant language of the eye.

e-mail to John Cullen

BIOGRAPHY

John Cullen

b. 1948: St. Louis, Missouri

 

Education

 

B.A., Social Welfare

California State University

Los Angeles, CA, 1975

 

M.A., Studio Arts

California State University

Los Angeles, CA, 1980

 

M.A., Depth Psychology

Pacifica Graduate Institute

Carpinteria, CA, 1992

 

One Person Exhibits

"Inland Abstractions"

Claremont Community Foundation

Claremont, CA, 1999

"Spirit 'N' Matter"
Claremont Forum
Claremont, California, 1998

"Semi-Devotional Objects from the Resurrection Series"
Artworks Gallery
Claremont, California, 1996

"Visages"
Quaker Meeting House

Claremont, California, 1995

"Crosses and Other Forms of Opposition"

DA Gallery

Pomona, California, 1994

"Compilations"
Orange County Center for Contemporary Art

Santa Ana, California, 1982

"Archetypes--Clay Sculpture"

CSULA Fine Arts Gallery

Los Angeles, California, 1980

"Assemblage Paintings"
Gallery 116
Los Angeles, California, 1978

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