The Falling.

James Bullough is an American born artist living and working in Berlin, Germany. His paintings, and huge monumentally scaled site-specific murals, are phenomenal combinations of realist painting technique and graphic punctuation. Inspired by gritty urban graffiti as a young artist growing up in Washington, DC, Bullough harnessed its energy in his work, and perfected a realistic oil painting technique from his study of the Old Masters. Combining the momentum of the one and the technical precision of the other, his work is about staging compelling contrasts and juxtapositions. Working in everything from oil, spray paint and ink on canvas, Bullough’s paintings strike a balance between realistic figurations and stylized interruption. Disjointing the realistic elements with graphic areas and fractured or striated planes, Bullough intends to challenge the viewer’s perception.

His work is stunning, and highly emotive. For his Breaking Point series:

In this new series of works, Bullough captures moments of existential fracture, disruption, and personal breach through the expressive movement of the body, asking his models to channel personal memory and to recall experiences of “breaking” at the moment of their capture. Working with dancers from Berlin, Bullough begins with the body in motion, arrested in an expense of negative space, then dissembles it further, splicing, striating, and fragmenting its surfaces and planes. The models remain anonymous and faceless throughout, an omission intended to reaffirm the symbolic universality of the emotive physical gesture.

Enough.

Burst.

Oil painting on old, found book.

Click images for full size. Have a wander around James’s gallery, it’s full of amazing works. James Bullough.com.