My practice is rooted in drawing and in an enduring interest in how simple structures, repeated actions and sustained attention can shape the experience of making and looking. Before reorienting my practice towards drawing in 2008, I worked primarily with painting and printmaking. The shift towards drawing marked a significant change in both my materials and my way of working, placing the drawn mark at the centre of my practice and opening up a sustained enquiry into order, repetition, tone and perception.

Across my practice, I am interested in the relationship between a constructed image and the experience of looking at it. I make pictures that are deliberately restrained, seeking clarity, coherence and a sense of visual equilibrium. My processes are methodical and shaped by self-imposed structures, reducing the need for continual subjective decisions and allowing attention to be given to the physical qualities of drawing and to the subtle variations that emerge through repetition.

The work moves between rational organisation and perceptual experience. Structure provides a framework, but the hand, the material and the duration of making introduce variation and uncertainty. Drawing therefore becomes both a way of constructing an image and a way of attending to the present moment. The act of making and the resulting image are closely connected yet remain distinct experiences.

My work has developed primarily through two related bodies of drawings: Ruler Drawings and Gatherings | Still Point. Although they have developed alongside one another and differ in their methods and visual character, both explore how structure, repetition and sustained attention can shape the experience of making and looking.

Ruler Drawings are constructed through predetermined sequences, proportion, repetition and tonal progression. Gatherings | Still Point develops through the accumulation and organisation of individual marks, exploring relationships between density, space, perception and attention. While both enquiries remain important to my practice, Ruler Drawings have now become my primary focus. Their increasingly reduced means allow me to approach drawing as a series of sustained exercises in the relationships between line, interval, proportion, tone, repetition and duration, and on the subtle variations that emerge through the physical act of drawing.

I am drawn to work that is modest in its means but demanding in its execution; work in which proportion, rhythm, tone, touch and surface can become sufficient subject matter. I seek clarity without rigidity, simplicity without simplification, and images that reward sustained looking. Ultimately, I want to make drawings that invite a slower way of looking: pictures with clarity and inner coherence that offer a moment of calm, attention and contemplation.

Duncan Bullen

July 2026