Bridget Mullen b. 1976

Bridget Mullen’s paintings combine decisive mark-making with intuition and experimentation to conjure psychedelic compositions that oscillate between abstraction and figuration. Instead of sketching or initiating a painting with a concrete idea in mind, Mullen begins each piece with abstract marks, undulating lines, and a layering of color. Each formal development on the canvas informs the next until the totality of choices begins to evoke characteristics of a body—eyes appear and gaze lazily, hair and eyelashes unfurl, and arms and legs spring into motion.

The repetition of lines and a stutter of pigment are signature gestures in her practice, alluding to rapid movement or the passage of time. A visible tension between density and open space remains palpable regardless of composition, favoring exaggerated compression or an illusion of elastic expanse. Sculptural dimensionality and flatness, abstraction and representation, and solidity and fluidity are not oppositions within Mullen’s practice, but rather complementary halves of an enigmatic whole.

 Bridget Mullen holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and a BAE from Drake University. She has been awarded residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell, The Jan Van Eyck Academie, The Lighthouse Works, Roswell Artist-In-Residence Program, The Fine Arts Work Center, VCCA, and Yaddo. Her recent solo exhibitions include Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Helena Anrather, New York, NY; and Annet Gelink, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and recent group exhibitions include Anne Barrault, Paris, France; Bosse & Baum, London, UK; Nathalie Karg, New York, NY; Wild Palms, Düsseldorf, Germany; DC Moore, New York, NY; Fahrenheit Madrid, Madrid, Spain; and L21, Mallorca, Spain. She is the recipient of the 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship, the 2017–2018 recipient of a studio from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, and the 2018–2019 participant in the Shandaken Paint School. Mullen’s work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Maake Magazine, and ArtMaze. Her work is in the collections of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell, NM, and the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Long Beach, CA.