Duncan Bullen (b.1962) studied at Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design and at Leeds Polytechnic in the mid-1980s. He then studied Printmaking at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1991. He was awarded a year-long Scholarship to the British School at Rome in 1991-92. After this, he undertook a series of residencies at the Eremo di Santa Caterina, a former hermitage on the Italian island of Elba, which was formative in shaping a visual language that investigates stillness, perception, equilibrium and contemplation.

He began his exhibition career at the Jill George Gallery in London in 1993, where he has held several solo exhibitions. Since then, Duncan has undertaken artist residencies in the US, the UK, and New Zealand, made several research trips to Japan and Korea, and exhibited internationally. Between 2010 and 2020, Duncan collaborated with the composer Jamie Crofts (aka Jim Simm) on Chromatic Fields, first published as an artist book in 2011 and later as a box-set CD/DVD by ANTS Records in Rome in 2020. Several of his recent exhibitions have been presented through Saturation Point, a curatorial platform for systems, non-objective and reductive art.

Duncan worked at the University of Brighton for 25 years, holding key roles including Associate Dean, Head of Fine Art, and Course Leader for Printmaking. He established the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing and was its first director. Duncan has presented conference papers and written about his practice-based research in book chapters and journal articles, and co-curated exhibitions in the UK, Japan and Thailand. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2024, he began a PhD by Publication and completed his doctorate in 2025 with a thesis titled Singularity of Present Moment Experience: Mindfulness as Drawing, Drawing as Mindfulness. He is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Brighton. He relocated to Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales in 2025, where he now lives and works.